


Measure Each Step Side-stories

by paxbanana



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-16
Updated: 2016-01-16
Packaged: 2018-05-14 06:42:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 23
Words: 56,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5733382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paxbanana/pseuds/paxbanana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Quite a few little short-stories sprang up around the MES-verse but had no place in the story. I'm throwing them here. Some are also on ff.net.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Playing the reluctant host

**Author's Note:**

> Toph decides she's going to finally get her field trip with one of the Fire Nation royal siblings. Azula is ever reluctant. Takes place just after Book 1 ends.

Azula didn't know what it was about her estate on Ember Island that made the Avatar's friends think it was the perfect place to go for a little soul searching. That was her first thought when she stepped into her courtyard after suffering a play with Ursa and saw the blind earthbender girl sitting there as if she owned the place.

In that hopeless moment, Azula realized that she had even less of a choice about hosting Toph Bei Fong than she had when Katara had shown up at her door. She'd not considered that her relationship with Katara meant she had to make nice with her friends. What an absolute bother.

Azula sighed and turned to her mother to make introductions. "Mom, this is—"

Toph lifted one dirty foot and brought it back down on the ground. Azula was abruptly buried to her neck in rock, her eyes level with her mother's ankles. "—Toph Bei Fong," she continued on the same breath. "I would appreciate it if you would fix my courtyard when you've finished whatever it is you're doing, earthbender," she snapped.

"What's going on?!" Ursa gasped.

"Hi," Toph replied brightly; she raised a dirty hand to wave. "A little insurance for me so your crazy daughter doesn't try to murder me again."

"If I wanted to murder you, you'd be dead," Azula replied calmly.

"As if. So, I hear you've been fucking my friend."

Ursa stiffened so sharply Azula was surprised she didn't break something. Azula replied, "If you're worried about Katara's virtue, you're half a year too late. I assure you I don't take all weary Avatar wanderers that decide to visit Ember Island into my bed."

"Yeah, yeah, Fire Lord Harem."

That was actually humorous. "Harem? If I've ever had one of those, I certainly failed to notice. Though I suppose I do exude a certain charm."

Toph wrapped her hands around her own throat and gagged dramatically.

Azula's servants were now in the courtyard watching the embarrassing scene in alarm. Her usual hand twitch of dismissal wouldn't work since she was completely encased in rock. "Stop gawking," she commanded her majordomo. "I'm sure you all have something else you can be doing right now."

The servants quickly vacated the courtyard. Ursa hesitated before she moved to sit down on the ground. Toph slapped a hand against the ground and a hunk of the courtyard lurched up to meet Ursa. She screamed in shock as she sat on the fashioned seat.

Azula's voice was colored with her quiet laughter. "My, my. What kind of backwoods manners did they drill into your soul, earthbender? I must say, you are looking alarmingly cleaner than the last time I saw you. Did someone dunk you in a livery stable trough before you came here?"

"Azula," Ursa snapped. "You should at least be polite to the person who has you so completely dominated. And I would like to request, Young Lady Toph, please do _not_ harm my daughter."

"Finally, someone who's polite. Listen to your mother, Firebitch. If you were nicer to me, maybe you'd already be out of that hole."

"Why don't you come a little closer so I can whisper sweet nothings in your ear?"

"Yeah fucking right, Fire Breath. How about you kiss my sorry ass and I'll fart fire back at you."

"How amusing," Azula replied. "Come up with another one. I'm dying of laughter over here."

"I'm not letting you out, Firebitch. You can fucking forget it."

"We're in for a lovely evening then, aren't we? I suppose we could have a picnic in the courtyard, and you could tip food into my gullet. When it rains, use me as a precipitation monitor." Azula sighed, blew a lock of hair from her eyes, and began to whistle off-key.

"I can squeeze you a little tighter to shut you up, you know," Toph said.

Ursa sighed deeply; her alarm had shifted to resignation. "Lady Bei Fong, if you're waiting for my daughter to be polite, it's not going to happen. I for one would love to enjoy the supper waiting for us inside."

"Your hear that? Your own mother thinks you're rude."

"Was that supposed to hurt my feelings? I _am_ rude."

Toph stood up and skirted around Azula's head. Toph dropped into half-lotus behind Azula and proceeded to drum against the back of Azula's skull. Azula controlled her temper in a valiant effort. Her next words came from between her clenched teeth. "Tell me, earthbender, is it true you can metalbend as well?"

"Where'd you learn about that?" Toph sounded slightly less miffed. She stopped drumming, and Azula's blood pressure decreased significantly…at least until Tonkara wandered into the courtyard and collapsed into a purring furry bundle against her face. Ursa deigned to pick up the bearded cat to rescue Azula from that indignity.

She blew cat hair from her mouth and explained, "I had a fun little stint in the basement of the royal palace before I was transported to my prison cell in the desert. It's amazing what guards will say with a catatonic guest in the room."

Ursa's lips pinched in displeasure. Azula wished her mother would just get over it already. She didn't know what they all had expected the royal guards to do after a full coup.

"I'm hearing a lot of euphemisms in that statement," Toph said lightly.

"Anyway," Azula continued. "It was confirmation of what I'd seen during the eclipse. I heard talk of a small blind girl that attacked the assault forces. They said you could command metal into a suit of armor and seemed particularly terrified that you could scuttle across the ceiling. Funny that grown men are so terrified of things that even vaguely resemble spiders."

"Let's see how well you do if I dropped a kartantula in front of your face." Toph snickered. "That was fun as hell though. I totally rock at bending."

"How does one metalbend? I was unaware it was possible."

"It's just purified earth. I sense it the same way I use earth to sense the world."

"How helpful of you to provide an explanation I can understand," Azula sarcastically quipped.

"I see by vibrations in the earth," Toph said. "So, in a fucktastic situation, I saw vibrations in metal. It's a lot more unwieldy than earth, but I think that's just my lack of practice showing. Tell me, Psychobitch, how is it that you bend lightning?"

Ursa's expression went sour.

"I manipulate the charges in my body to create two poles. Then, as with fire, I release the energy I built up from charging those poles in the form of lightning, thus returning my body to its natural state. Many firebenders can do it if they try, but only few can actually direct the lightning anywhere but the ground." She'd used present tense out of pure habit…or maybe out of pure wish.

"What happens if it goes to the ground instead?"

"Your feet take the charge, and you potentially die from a heart attack. It's incredibly painful."

Ursa went white when she heard that; she clutched her robe in a white-knuckled grip. "No," she said as she realized what Azula meant. "No, Azula, no."

Azula rolled her eyes. "I had to make the mistake to learn never to make it again."

Ursa looked at her so sharply Azula flinched.

"Wowzer." Toph whistled sharply. "Someone got the stinkeye." Then, abruptly, Azula was out of the ground, standing back on the unbroken ground of her courtyard. She swayed before she caught her balance.

"Let's get some grub!" Toph chanted happily. She folded her arms behind her neck and walked into the house without a care. Azula sent her the stinkeye herself as she brushed her clothing off and followed the earthbender into her home. Her curiosity was greater than her embarrassment so she asked, "How did you know that, given you're oh so blind?"

"I guess an 'I saw it' joke isn't going to work with you, huh?"

"I get the feeling your Avatar friends aren't particularly bright."

"You totally just called your girlfriend dumb. I'm telling on you!" Toph continued conspiratorially, "She is pretty dumb though. It makes things interesting at least. Anyway, I can measure pulse, breathing, and stuff like that through the earth. I'm pretty good at gauging lies from truth too, purple platypus bear. You were definitely scared shitless by whatever the hell look your mother gave you."

"You're a startlingly precocious little thing, aren't you?"

"Come a little closer and say that again," Toph threatened, sugary sweet. Then she walked into a wall and rebounded with a snarl. "Fucking wooden house!"

Azula didn't hide her laugh, but she did catch Toph's arm and steered her out onto the veranda where their supper awaited them. Ursa sat wearily. "Wine," Ursa requested, her face in her hand. "Lots of wine."

Azula wasn't sure why her mother was so agitated. Toph was a lovely, polite young woman. A true lady. Toph punctuated Azula's sarcastic thought with a massive belch.

* * *

Toph had grown since the war. She was, to Azula's chagrin, taller than Azula now. For the height she'd gained, she'd not put on weight; she was all lanky gawkiness. Given that she was such a proficient earthbender, undoubtedly her frame would fill out with hard muscle and strong sinew. She would be a formidable woman.

For now, she was an awkward looking teenage girl who was all knobby elbows and knees.

Azula watched her wander around on the beach the next day, scaring seagulls and punting crabs into the surf. After she'd completely destroyed the beach, she flopped down in front of Azula in the sand.

"So, seriously," she said. "How did you get Katara to be your girlfriend?"

"Don't tell me your morbid curiosity is the reason why you're here."

"Hey, I'm not missing out on this firebender field trip vacation thing again. Everybody got a great ole field trip with Zuko and I was stuck with nothing. Congratulations, you're his substitute."

Azula wasn't sure what she was supposed to think about that. She settled with uneasy disgust.

"Oh, relax," Toph said carelessly. "I didn't mean I want to fuck you or anything. I'm kind of scared you have teeth down there or something."

"You have a foul mind for a ten year old."

Finally, Azula managed to coax satisfying offense. "I'm _fourteen_!" Toph blew air from her mouth rudely. "Old enough for my parents to start talking about arranged marriages."

That at least was something Azula had never had to fear. If Ozai hadn't taken the throne…well, that was another matter. She was certain that she would have joined the military out of self-defense. Many noble daughters were matched early in life and married the day of their sixteenth birthday to form an alliance with another family. It was a disgustingly sexist custom that should have been abolished many centuries ago after the age of gender equality.

Perhaps this was the motivation for the surprise visit. "You would be better off appealing to Fire Lord Zuzu if you want to protest a marriage arrangement. Moping on my beach isn't going to solve the issue."

Toph shrugged. "I don't care about legal mumbo-jumbo. All I have to do is run away. What I'm trying to figure out is what the hell to do with my parents. Every time I come back from running away, it's all, 'Oh, Toph, we're so sorry; we'll never ask anything from you again!' Two months later, 'Toph you're not serious enough about your future!'" She shook herself. "Seriously though, how in the world did you and Katara hook up?"

Azula accepted the change of subject for what it was. Her answer could have been snide or vulgar. Instead, she told the truth. "I can't begin to guess how Katara's mind works."

Toph chewed on her lip for a moment in consideration, then she offered a big grin and a reprieve. "You mean you didn't use your seductive skills?"

"I didn't take that class in the Royal Academy; my seductive skills must be innate."

Toph laughed and flopped to her back. "Man, Aang was _so_ pissed!" She sounded gleeful about that. "If he wasn't a pacifist, I'd tell you to watch yourself."

Azula's words were bitter. "Who needs to kill when you can reach into a person's soul and rape their bending away?"

Toph grunted. "You have a point." She was silent for a beat and rolled on one elbow to face Azula. "Look, I'm telling you this as a bender to another bender. Energybending is fucking hard. If Aang makes one mistake while he does it, he loses his bending…or something funky like that."

"Why would he take that risk then?"

"Honestly, I don't think it's worth it for him to do it at all. Might as well just kill your enemies. No muss, no fuss. But Aang is worried about the state of his mortal soul or something." Toph rolled her wrist in dismissal.

The selfishness of that pacifistic wish was beyond comprehension. The Avatar had taken a man's bending so he wouldn't have to end his life…a man who could have commanded his loyal nobles to rebel and reclaim the throne from Zuko and start a bloody civil war. It was lucky for all of them that Ozai had been as useless after the end of the war as she had been. If Ozai started a rebellion now, his own son would be forced to kill him.

And it was all for the Avatar to sleep better at night.

"Look, I'm telling you you probably don't have to worry about Aang."

Azula was obligated to say, "I appreciate your information."

Her honesty caused an unexpected response. "Appreciate this!" Toph farted.

Azula gathered herself to hold back her teeth-clenching irritation. What she didn't expect was her own amusement. She burst into laughter. "You are a disgusting hoodlum."

"Yep, and I'm proud of it!" Toph blew a raspberry. "I'm totally gonna rub off on you just so I can annoy Katara even when I'm not here."

"Do not rub anything on me," Azula warned. "Or I will break it off and feed it to you."

Toph positively cackled.

* * *

Toph was a much different houseguest than Katara had been. She didn't avoid Azula, and she didn't go out of her way to interact with her either. Toph came and went as she pleased, and she slept out on the beach as often as she slept in the bed Azula's servants kept prepared for her—and she tracked sand all through the house, much to the horror of Azula's majordomo. The times they interacted seemed to be more about Toph warding off boredom than anything else.

She was rude, awkwardly honest, and didn't seem to have any standards of personal hygiene.

Azula liked her.

Several weeks had passed since Toph had taken partial residence in her home when Azula walked down to the beach only to see the earthbender sitting in the wet sand wringing out a bloody cloth. Toph's expression was tight with unhappiness.

A moment passed before Azula realized what might have happened with growing horror. Why _now_ with her of all people? She didn't know how to deal with this sort of thing. Where was Katara or Ursa when she needed them?

No doubt Toph had sensed her approach. There was no use trying to walk away, and part of her felt unwilling sympathy for the uncomfortable shock of it. "Your first cycle?"

"Anyone ever tell you that you like to point out the obvious?" Toph asked, uncharacteristically morose. "I woke up with my belly twisted in knots this morning and sticky blood between my legs. Surprise! The universe reminds me it hates me again!"

"Congratulations," Azula said dryly. She sat down in the sand next to Toph and remembered when she'd started years ago. "It doesn't get better."

"Great." Toph flicked a toe and sent a cascade of sand shooting towards the ocean. "I came out broken one way; I hoped I could be broken another way too. Is that too much to ask?"

"It doesn't get better, but it _does_ get easier," Azula amended. "I'm sure Katara would have something better to say." She rolled her eyes and spoke with heavy scorn. "Something about how her bending and body wax and wane with the moon, sisterhood, and the closeness between women and nature. Blah blah blah."

"Huh?"

"Exactly. Just imagine her saying something about the strength and power of a woman and relating that to your bleeding."

"I'm already comforted." Toph was sarcastic, but Azula's words had earned a faint smile. "I just keep thinking about how soon it'll be when my parents decide to marry me off. I have to sit for these stupid lessons about how to host parties and eat at a table and keep a womanly household or whatever. I don't even want to marry; I figured if I couldn't have kids nobody would want me."

"No?" Azula asked. Why Toph Bei Fong had decided to use her home as a place for soul searching about this issue, she still couldn't fathom. What sort of lies had Katara been telling her friends?

"No." A rude noise accompanied the adamant refusal. "I'm not sure I even _like_ boys. Maybe I want a girlfriend too."

Azula took that statement with a grain of salt and made no comment. Toph had proven she was contrary by her nature. "Perhaps you could compromise with your parents."

"Compromise?"

Clearly Azula would have to hold her figurative hand through this conversation. "Why do they want you to be contracted to marry so young?"

"I don't know. I guess they want to make sure the family names lives on or something."

"Then show them you can carry the family name on. Obviously I can't speak for your parents, but in my experience nobles are exceedingly simple. They want money and a legacy. Show your parents you can and will take over the estate in the future; show them _you_ want to do it, not your spouse."

"Ugh, that means tutoring and classes."

"So agree to lessons on managing the estate. Women are just as legitimate heirs as men. If you're educated, you have far more say about your suitor because his or her identity won't impact the financial future of the family. You'll know how to manage it alone. And if your parents disagree, you'll be educated enough to pursue interests elsewhere."

The idea wrinkled Toph's brow and finally pushed a sigh from her lips. She set her head against her knees and turned her hooded eyes in Azula's direction. "When did you start your cycle?"

Azula was so nonplussed by the change in conversation that she answered honestly. "I was twelve, and servants discreetly left different undergarments for me to wear."

Toph was always translucent with her facial expressions. Her milky eyes widened in shock. "That was it? No one talked to you about it?"

"Who would dare?" Azula asked in a weak joke.

Toph giggled, then sighed. "That sucked, didn't it?"

"I assure you, I had more important things to worry about." She'd graduated from the academy to undertake private tutoring at the palace, train daily with Ozai, and sit in on trade and war meetings. Thinking of that time in her life made her both nostalgic and morose. It had been so easy but so desperately unhappy. "I didn't have time to worry about it. Before I knew it, I'd stopped bleeding and then started again the next month."

"Did you miss your mother?"

The question brought out the sting about the entire thing, an insult she hadn't realized she'd felt at all until Toph's question. Though her childhood, she'd carried around unconscious bitterness about all the ways that Ursa might have made her life a little easier. Azula took a breath and examined these bitter emotions for the first time. She gathered the negative emotion in her breath and released it, pushing it out with her exhalation.

"Nothing can be done to change the past. Things were as they were." How disgustingly Iroh-ish of her.

They were quiet for a while. Toph did finger-dances on the sand, coaxing shapes and figures that the rising tide swept away every few moments. Finally she groaned in frustration once again. "So maybe that was good advice about education and crap. But how can I do all that when lessons are my biggest problem?"

"Explain."

She rapped a knuckle on her scalp. "It's impossible to keep all that information in my head, and my tutors think I'm stupid when I ask them to repeat something. There's no way for me to remember everything the first go-around. And math is so friggin' impossible. I can't keep the numbers straight."

"You need notes."

"Yeah, brilliant, Bitchbender. Let me take notes and read them with these sightless eyes!" She waved a hand in front of her face.

Azula rolled her eyes. "You're so proud of your blindness and yet you use it as an excuse."

"What the fuck is that supposed to mean! I'm blind. I can't see fucking ink on a fucking scroll!"

"Your vocabulary is limited, isn't it?" Toph flicked her off. Azula sighed. "It cannot be beyond your ability to simply devise a way in which you can learn to read and write."

"Another brilliant idea. I guess I could punch holes in a piece of parchment and feel my way across the paper."

How amusing that the girl was so dismissive of a good idea. Azula generously pointed that out. "That's not a bad idea."

Toph scowled at the ground in evident frustration. "There aren't enough friggin' dots in the universe to match the number of friggin' words I hear every day."

"It's true the main writing system uses morpheme symbols, but you don't have to use that one. The noblewomen of the Fire Nation write notes and poetry in a phonological script."

"Explain that to me in a way I'll understand."

Well, at least she had Toph's full attention. "Our sound system consists of a finite number of phonemes."

Toph's expression was blank in incomprehension.

"Phonemes are sounds that have a linguistic meaning. If you take a consonant-vowel pair and translate that into a written symbol, you're left with about forty phonemes and corresponding written characters. If you combine those sounds, say for my name: A-zu-la, you can spell out the word with three characters." Azula demonstrated by writing each phoneme in the sand as she spoke them. "Likewise, Zu-ko." She wrote his name. "The 'zu' that's the middle syllable in my name is the same as the one that starts my brother's name."

Toph pressed her palm to the sand. She frowned in concentration as she sensed Azula's writing in the sand. "So… I could make three different patterns that I can touch and it would mean the sounds of your name?"

"Yes. You can further reduce the number of discrete phoneme symbols by pairing voiced and voiceless consonants." Azula wrote out the characters for 'zu' and 'su' next to each other.

"I don't know what that means," Toph admitted. Slowly, Toph's finger ghosted over the characters Azula had written, then she copied them. "A-zu-la," Toph said quietly. She continued. "Zu-ko… Wow. Fucking wow."

"If you insist on it, I might show you the phonetic writing system to help you devise a touch-based script."

"Fucking hell," Toph said again.

"You're so eloquent."

"Fuck," Toph said again. To Azula's horror, she began to cry. "I can do it," she said with a wet laugh. "I can fucking do it!" Toph flopped onto her back and shouted out a loud yelp of pleasure. "Fuck, yeah!"

She took a few minutes to gather herself. When she sat back up, she wiped her cheeks dry. "Azula."

It was the first time Toph had used her name. She answered Toph with the same soberness that Toph had addressed her. "Yes, Toph?"

"May I feel your face?"

Azula heaved an exaggerated sigh. "Oh, I suppose I can survive your grubby hands on me."

Toph's fingers ghosted over her forehead, over her brow and eyes, across her cheekbones and nose, and rubbed gently at her lips and chin. They pressed back to cup Azula's ears and then slipped into her hair and down her neck. Azula sat and fought the instinct to flinch from each touch.

"Oh," Toph said lightly, her eyes wide. "You're not hideous."

"Why, thank you. Your charm is utterly astounding."

Toph understood the dryness of her voice and sniggered. "Don't get your panties in a twist." She brought her fingertips to Azula's lips. "Smile so I know you really can."

Surprisingly, it wasn't that hard.

* * *

"What in the world are you doing?"

Azula set the blunted metal nail against a dotted paper covering the thin metal sheet on her desk. She lifted her hammer and swung it down, breaking the paper and denting the metal sheet. "I'm writing a letter."

Katara rounded the desk and looked as confused as Azula expected her to be.

It was a complicated thing to write to Toph Bei Fong. Azula had to write out the dotted script on thin paper, flip it upside down, and hammer out each dot so that the script rounded outward for Toph's fingertips. Toph had said she could use metalbending to sense each bump, but if this script was to be appropriate for blind non-benders, Azula refused to be lazy about their first clumsy attempts to correspond.

Azula glanced over her shoulder at Katara. She was happy to accept a kiss. She reached for the thin metal sheet leaning against the side of her desk. "I'm replying to a letter from your blind friend."

"A letter?" Katara took the sheet in her hands and stared at it. She touched the raised bumps carefully.

"For being from such an affluent family, she's an atrocious speller."

Katara balanced the metal letter in one arm and brushed her fingers down one row. "You can read this?"

Azula reached into one of her desk drawers and unrolled the key she and Toph had devised. "Not quite yet; I have a key. I'm learning, but I'm working at a disadvantage because Toph apparently can't discern the difference between voiced and voiceless consonants."

"What does it say?"

Azula would have handed Katara her written translation, but Katara hadn't learned the noblewoman phonetic script yet. It was more fun to say it anyway. "Toph was engaged."

"Engaged? _Toph_?"

"…for two hours. Apparently her betrothed didn't appreciate her flatulent talents."

Katara giggled. She watched Azula pound a few more dots and dashes into the waiting metal sheet. Her expression took on that odd tenderness that made Azula's stomach flip. "You did this for Toph?"

"You can be assured I did nothing _for_ her. She did all of the work," Azula sniped back gently, finishing her sentence with a literal bang. "I learned she's such a delightful character during her visit last season. I'd hate to go without hearing her rude little jokes for any length of time."

Katara leaned against Azula's shoulder and shook her head with a sigh. "You better watch out. All my friends are going to start thinking you're nice."

"I shudder at the thought," Azula muttered, wrapping an arm around her waist. "I don't want any more soul searching strays showing up at my door."

"Only me?"

"Only you."


	2. Letting go is the hardest part

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Katara's thoughts as she waits for Azula to return (from Agni Kai). Takes place during the last chapter of book 2.

Katara didn't refuse to see Azula's Agni Kai because she felt so betrayed by everything Azula had done in the last day; Katara refused because she was afraid the temptation to intervene would be too great. All it would take was one sharp yank of her hand to trip Azula's opponent or jerk his arm and send him to his death. She knew without a doubt that she could bloodbend without the full moon. She could do it if she had to to save Azula from injury or death.

Azula would never forgive her for that. Katara would never forgive herself either.

She was surprised to see Kota walk into Azula's bedroom only a minute after she'd left with Azula. Katara had remained there frozen in her own fear. Kota smiled gently at Katara, welcome and a comfort. "Lady Katara, we should sit out on the balcony."

"Please, Kota." Katara held out her hand, and Kota took it with an uncomfortable smile.

"Katara," the woman corrected herself carefully. On most other occasions, seeing Kota's lips twist as she delivered Katara's name without a title was funny. Today it was just sad.

Sometimes she could be swept away by the beauty and wealth and formality of the Fire Nation. Most of the time, Katara was saddened that Azula could share her daily life with the people she called her servants and they would never be comfortable enough to use her name.

They walked out to the balcony. The setting sun was sharp against her eyes, and the air was hot and heavy against her skin. She missed the South Pole so much. Her home always drew her back like Azula always drew her here. She could resist her home to stay through their anniversary. If Azula didn't... Katara swallowed the lump in her throat and refused to finish that thought.

Azula thought she was invincible, but Katara had learned firsthand it wasn't true.

And in these years since the war… She knew as much as Azula tried to hide it that she didn't keep up with her bending. It was so unlike her girlfriend to let that aspect of herself go, but Azula carried her loss from the end of the war around like some sort of personal burden. Maybe she thought she didn't deserve to bend anymore. Katara just prayed Azula had kept up enough to win this Agni Kai.

Who knew. Maybe Azula didn't practice her firebending when Katara was in the Fire Nation because she thought Katara didn't want her to, and she was still as good as she'd been during the war. Azula's motivations always seemed so convoluted even if they were simple. In this, Katara couldn't guess the truth.

Whenever she'd tried to talk about it, Azula had gotten angry enough that Katara had just let it go. An illogical part of her (one that she couldn't turn off) was upset that she was the reason for Azula's personal burden. She shouldn't have let it go, but at the time it hadn't seemed worth fighting about. She'd been wrong; Azula's firebending turned out to be more important than she'd ever thought. The violence of this nation even in peacetime scared Katara.

These people called her a savage, but they lived and breathed blood and fire. They met each other with cruel words and violence that stunned her. She could forget that Azula was one of them sometimes. It had been easier on Ember Island. When Azula smiled at her with love and vulnerability, she forgot what Azula could look so fierce and terrifying when she was in a rage. In Capital City, Azula was less the awkward dorky doofus Katara knew and more the unfathomable savage princess.

Knowing that Azula had chosen this life for herself made Katara fear that she'd lose all those soft moments altogether. She didn't want Azula to become the person she'd been during the war. She was angry that Azula _wanted_ to become that again. She was angry too that Azula had thrown away whatever chance they may have had to make a life together in both of their homes.

Most of all she was angry that Azula might be about to throw her life away.

Katara slowly sat down with her back against the balcony railing. Kota carefully settled next to her, still holding her hand.

"I thought you would go with Azula."

"The princess asked me to stay with you."

Katara's anxiety tightened her throat. "If she needs you—"

"Princess Azula needs only herself. She's been groomed for this her entire life," Kota said quietly. "I watched her grow up, Lady Katara. I watched her train to become the warrior she is now. Lam will die so that she can prove that to the Fire Nation again."

Those words were not comforting. Azula was so foreign. Sometimes she was exotic, and sometimes (like when she'd drawn her dagger at the wedding and looked at her own brother like he was her prey) she was just alien.

"I'm so afraid she'd going to change."

"She has changed." Kota squeezed her hand gently. "She's changed into the woman you love, the woman who loves you. The last few years she's needed to recover from her loss during the war, but now the princess is ready to be who she needs to be. She's ready to lead her nation again."

Katara glanced at her. "Did you see her during Sozin's Comet?" Azula had never spoken of it to her, but she'd learned from Iroh that Azula had been plagued with hallucinations of Ursa. It was one issue Katara knew she absolutely had to leave alone.

Kota frowned. "I should have stayed. She banished me. She banished everyone."

"Why?"

Kota shook her head. "We would have stayed if we had known about the effects of the comet."

"She can be so awful to you."

Kota laughed. "The princess doesn't tolerate stupidity; we all know that. But she isn't cruel. She takes care of us too, in her way."

"I can bloodbend," Katara said in a rush. "I would have gone to support her, but I'm afraid I would use it against the man she's fighting. I know I should be there to support her, but if I did that…"

"Then it's better for you to be here," Kota said without judgment. Katara shuddered as Kota released some of the guilt that sat heavy on her shoulders.

They both went quiet as they waited for the eighth hour. When the clock in Azula's sitting room chimed eight times, Kota's hand tightened against Katara's. They both jumped at the sound of the distant gong.

It felt like an eternity passed. Then a sound broke the silence of the royal palace: a din of thunder. Applause. And with it, Katara heard a deep, sonorous chant of three syllables: A-ZU-LA-A-ZU-LA-A-ZU-LA.

She looked at Kota and watched the woman's usually somber face stretch in a proud smile. The other servants of Azula's household stepped out onto the balcony to listen. They carried themselves like Azula's victory was their own. They loved Azula fiercely, contrary to Katara's every expectation.

Katara wished she could mirror their pride. All she felt in that moment was fear for how this would change things.

She wouldn't let Azula go, but she was afraid she might not have a choice.


	3. Building a legacy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Iroh confronts Ozai during the events of Book 2. Spoilers, obviously.

Iroh was filled with vague déjà vu as he walked into the iron prison. Unlike his journey years ago to fetch Azula, today he was not here to offer forgiveness and a second chance. Ozai deserved nothing but the noose.

He hadn't seen his brother since before the war ended. The change startled him. Even after all these years, Iroh expected silk and oil. A stranger sat on the linen pallet: Ozai was fat, his head was shaved, and his beard was unkempt. As vain a man as he was, he had let himself go. He looked older than Iroh.

Azula had loved this man as her father and offered him more care than Ozai would have ever received from anyone else, and Ozai had squandered it all for nothing. Iroh thought of his daughter for a moment…what a fierce, prideful, vexing sensation she evoked in him. How had Ozai thrown her away?

Iroh looked at this man who was his younger brother and wondered how they had come to this.

Perhaps it was no surprise that Ozai had turned out as he had. He'd always envied Iroh, even when they were little boys. Ozai was a failure at most things in his life, something Azulon had never failed to point out. He was a terrible tactician, a pompous firebender that relied upon flash and flutter more than strength and heat, and he'd never lived up to the ideal Azulon held for his sons.

What Ozai had failed to realize was that Iroh was a failure too.

Iroh had never lived up to Azulon's demands, but unlike Ozai, Iroh had taken pride in his failures. Iroh had learned how to hold his quiet rebellions inside him. Ozai never managed it. He'd always tried to fulfill Azulon's every wish with apparent anxiety. Azulon had sensed that desperation as easily as he'd sensed Iroh hadn't needed his approval. He'd rewarded Ozai's emotional weakness with dismissal and Iroh's independence with approval.

Ozai was a product of their father.

It was a tradition in their family: bad parenting. Even as a proud young man, Iroh had vowed to himself as soon as he was married that he would break that tradition. He had with Lu Ten…and then he'd led his son to his death at war. He hadn't with Azula. He'd failed to hold her close as a baby, to smile at her and praise her as a little girl, and he'd failed to protect her from Ozai—then and now.

He could close his eyes and picture Azula standing in the middle of the gardens with an arrow in her throat, watching as the second slipped between her ribs, Zuko's hand outstretched too late to save her from it. She'd been smiling.

He had failed her as a father.

But Iroh's one true comfort and his greatest pride was his certainty that Azula and Zuko would break that terrible tradition of their family. They would love their children as they had not been loved, and they would teach their children what was right in life.

Ozai began to laugh softly within the cell. His chains rattled. "Why hello, big brother."

"You don't have the right to call me that."

"Are you here to make me beg forgiveness, to say that I'm so so sorry for putting my daughter in her place? When did she die? Tell me it was after hours of screaming pain, in the arms of her waterbender whore." Ozai's lip curled with his sneer.

"No," Iroh said quietly. "I'm here to tell you something else."

Ozai grinned as he turned to face Iroh. What had happened to the happy little boy Iroh had once known? "Go on then. I haven't got all day."

"I had an affair with Ursa."

Ozai rocked back and laughed. "Oh, a confession? I forgive you." Ozai gave an arm rolling bow with a smirk. "I know you're fucking her. I certainly can't blame you; she's such a pretty face. When I fucked my whore, sometimes I closed my eyes and pictured her. Do you make her scream, Brother?"

"A pretty face," Iroh repeated softly. "That's all you ever saw when you looked at her. Ursa is much more than that. I love her. I loved her then."

Ozai began to frown as he sensed the incongruity of Iroh's statement. Iroh continued, "I loved her very much, and I never took for granted when she took me into her bed while you were away on your failed campaign."

Ozai's face stretched in shock.

"I did take for granted that Azula was born nine months later."

Ozai's chest began to heave; his expression turned to horror. There was no doubt in Iroh's mind that he had a grain of doubt about Azula's birth time and her birth weight. Ursa held fast to the claim that Azula had been born early, but as prideful as Ozai was, he must have wondered.

"No!" He snarled. " _No_! You're lying!"

"Azula is my daughter, Ozai. She was never yours."

"No!" Ozai lurched to his feet with a screaming snarl, rattling his restraints as he lunged at Iroh. Iroh didn't flinch. He watched Ozai's eyes fill with tears. "Azula is mine! She's _mine_!"

Iroh wondered how Ozai could feel such pain at the truth after he'd ordered Azula's murder. Yet he knew despite himself; Azula was the last thing Ozai could claim in this world, named for a man he could never make proud. Iroh barely restrained himself from putting a fiery fist through Ozai's head. "Even if she were, you lost the right to call her your daughter the day you ordered her death."

"Then I'm doubly glad she's dead," Ozai whispered.

Now Iroh hit him: no fire, just unsatisfying flesh to flesh. Ozai dropped to his knees on the floor, a hand to his swollen cheek, eyes wide in shock.

"She is not dead," Iroh replied quietly. "And she will not die. She will grow strong again and continue on and never think of you again. She will command fire again. She will rise up and sit on the throne again. She will live to see her own children sit on the throne and carry on the legacy. And she will do so as _my_ daughter."

Ozai made a sound between a sob and a snarl.

Iroh looked down at Ozai. "You will be hanged tonight. When you are dangling by your neck, paralyzed and unable to breathe, look into Azula's eyes and see that your petty insults, your abuse, and your every attempt to mold her into you have failed. And then…then die."


	4. Finding laughter in the pain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Katara's thoughts after the events of Book 2 epilogue. Even in that terrible situation, Azula still manages to be Azula.

Katara loved waterbending. She loved using it as an art; she loved it as a weapon; she loved healing with it.

But seeing Azula open her eyes, watch Katara reach out for her, and flinch away was too much. Servants held Azula's shoulders down on the bed, and Katara shook the tears from her eyes to cradle Azula's neck in her hands.

She held in mind all of the pictures and diagrams she'd studied into the late hours of each night and felt for each part of Azula's neck, gently teasing the tissues to reduce swelling and pain. Reducing the pain by causing it. Azula jerked beneath Katara's hands and cried silently, her mouth open to give a scream she couldn't voice.

The larynx was the hardest part. There were so many little bones, all sitting in careful alignment to allow breathing, swallowing, and voice. The structures had healed with more scarring than Katara liked, but they should have been able to function as a whole. The nerves supplying them had been damaged, and that wasn't anything Katara or the royal physician could heal. The only blessing was that Azula could still swallow. Without that…she would certainly die a painful death.

Katara wondered if she hadn't caused more damage by her ignorance the night of the arrows. She'd reached out with healing water in her hands and realized in one frozen moment of horror that she had no idea what all the tiny structures beneath her fingers were. This was not a wound she'd ever had to heal before, and this would take more than a little tweak of chi.

Azula's royal physician had stayed all night with Katara that first night, explaining what he could in words. He'd been sleeping on the couch in the sitting room, ready to offer his advice even in the face of Katara's angry defensiveness. She didn't trust anyone else to touch Azula…but she didn't entirely trust herself either.

Yanu, the jolly man who was always in the archives, carried every scroll and book on anatomy and healing and medicine from the archives to Azula's sitting room. Scrolls and books were still scattered everywhere, and Katara could close her eyes and picture the detailed diagrams floating behind her eyelids.

"I'm sorry, Azula. I'm so sorry," Katara murmured, brushing Azula's greasy hair from her forehead. Azula's eyes opened, and her ragged breath rumbled. She wheezed and snored and her throat made a soft roaring sound when her breath came too quickly. Katara placed her hands over the ugly divot that sat below Azula's right breast and soothed those tissues as best she could. The lungs were easier to understand than the complexity of the neck. The royal physician had placed a tube in Azula's chest to release the air that had collapsed her lung, but he'd pulled it the day before when Katara confirmed Azula's lung was open again. As open as it could be. Now Katara did her best to reduce the scar tissue.

She could do nothing about the infection that had set in. The physician claimed to have an injection that would combat it, and in the face of her own uselessness, Katara had to trust him. There was so much she didn't even realize she didn't know. Her own arrogance made her so angry at herself.

Azula looked up at her, and Katara didn't know what her girlfriend was seeing. Azula seemed to slip between waking dreams and reality often, and it was hard to tell when Azula couldn't speak. Now Azula's golden gaze sharpened. She looked at Katara. Her arm raised to point…so weakly. Her hand trembled and her elbow fell back to the mattress.

Katara turned her head. Azula was pointing to the sitting room. "Do you want something?"

Azula nodded with difficulty.

"Something in the sitting room?"

Azula closed her eyes and shook her head, wincing at her own movement.

She lifted her hand and cupped her fingers, rolling her wrist. Katara didn't understand; she shook her head, so upset with herself. She should have been able to fix this. Azula saw the gesture, and she closed her eyes, blinking out tears as she did so.

"Your writing desk, Princess?" Kota asked softly from the doorway.

Azula's eyes opened. She nodded firmly. Her eyes drifted closed again. Katara hesitantly placed her palm against Azula's hot, dry forehead; it was a sharp relief when Azula didn't flinch or turn from her touch.

Kota was back a moment later with a scroll, a flat piece of solid wood, and a quill pen. She settled those items beneath Azula's hand and wrapped her fingers around the pen. Azula opened her eyes again. She wrote two clumsy scratches, characters that were of the phonetic script of the Fire Nation. Katara hated that she hadn't learned it. She watched Kota read the paper, holding her breath.

Kota smiled.

"What?" Katara glanced down at Azula as she said it.

"It says 'bath'," Kota said.

For the first time in a week, Katara was able to laugh. Only Azula—on the brink of death, running a horrible fever, and suffering the worst injuries Katara had ever tried to heal—would be worried about cleanliness. She leaned down and kissed Azula's forehead. "Okay. I think we can work something out."


	5. Pride goeth before the .... fashion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Takes place between Books 2 and 3. Azula makes and boast, and Zuko raises her boast with a dare. what results in atrocity. Or in which tie-dyed robes become a Fire Nation style.

It started as a simple boast. Azula had long understood she controlled much of the fashion of Capital City by virtue of the fact she had no competition. The only other females in the royal family were a woman who wore black and thought a fashion accessory was a hidden weapon belt, a woman who only wore traditional clothing that had been out of fashion since the war, and an infant who preferred to wear nothing at all.

"Of course," Azula told her brother during a break in a council meeting. "Anything I wear will become the next fashion in a week."

Zuko looked at her with his eyebrow raised. "I don't believe it. What if you wore something ugly?"

"Are you deaf, Zuzu?" she asked him. "That ugly thing I happened to wear would become the next fashion."

He didn't say anything else about it, and they were both swept up in the next few months in a series of council meetings about whether to reduce or keep their existing military forces so Azula didn't think much of the exchange. It wasn't until a few months later when Katara was in the capital for her visit that Zuko brought it up again. He did so by sending her a gift.

Azula walked into her sitting room for some specific reason only to be completely diverted at the sight of all her servants and Katara clustered around something on the floor.

"What?" she asked, alarmed. Her first thought was that Tonk had somehow taken ill, but her bearded cat was asleep in a patch of sunlight on the settee.

Katara looked up at her with wide eyes. "You have to look at what Zuko sent you."

Her servants parted, Azula stared down at a mass of silk. It was bright yellow. Banana yellow. It was so blinding she winced when she looked at it. Insult to injury, there were bursts of just as bright pink, blue, and green splashed haphazardly on the yellow.

"What is that atrocity?" she asked. She felt the need to squint when she looked at it.

Katara opened the note that had come with it. She read, "'Azula, you said you could make anything the next fashion. I don't believe you. I want to see all the noble ladies wear this in a week. If that happens, I'll grant one request, no fine print involved.'"

Azula stared down at the cloth on the ground. Kota picked it up. In all its loud color, there were two sleeves. It was a robe. It was atrocious. It would make Azula look like some sort of embodiment of Tonkara's most brilliant vomit piles. Zuko had just dared her to wear it out in public.

Zuko had dared her.

"Well, we _were_ going to the theater tonight."

"There's not going to be a 'we' if you wear _that_."

Despite her words, Katara deigned to go out with Azula for dinner and to the theater. Nobles—men and women alike—stared at Azula like she was a walking catastrophe. She certainly looked like one. But the point was to pretend she didn't. She acted with the same dignity she always had and enjoyed her evening, despite Katara's jabs.

"I should have worn sun-shaders," Katara muttered in the restaurant. When they stepped out into the gray evening, she said, "You glow in the dark." When they were in their private box at the theater, she said, "People are too busy staring at you to watch the play." Then during the last act: "You could substitute the sun on stage."

"Yes, yes," Azula said each time with a sigh. "Laugh all you want. Mark my words: orders will be into all the clothiers tomorrow to copy this."

"There's no way anyone would choose to wear that," Katara pronounced.

"Ye of little faith."

Zuko was waiting for them in the royal gallery. He was practically vibrating in anticipation. When he saw Azula, he laughed so hard he had to sit down under his Fire Lord portrait. Azula swept by with utmost dignity. "I'm thinking hard about what I get to demand when noblewomen start wearing this in a week."

She lost her dignity when her little nephew pointed up at her, laughed, and said, "Auntie's a Bananana!"

Katara sputtered as she tried to hide her laughter. Traitor.

"Three syllables, Tozin," she told him with a sigh. "Banana."

"Bananana," he shouted with childish laughter.

She sighed again, leaned down, and picked him up to sweep him away from his father and her consort. Clearly it was time for him to be in bed. Zuko was still sitting on the floor like a fool, and Katara was bent over next to him crying tears of laughter. "I suppose this color deserves an extra syllable," she admitted to her nephew. He rewarded her with a kiss.

That night in bed, Katara massaged her shoulders and said, "It was a good try."

"Just you wait. I'll win this wager."

* * *

Family dinners out of the palace had become custom once a month. They rented out private rooms of a restaurant, rotating establishments around the royal district, and gave themselves an entire evening someplace where they could not be called away or distracted by a political 'emergency'. Ursa also claimed it let the nobles and commoners see that they were just a normal family.

Normal. Azula's family? Hah.

The following week when they took their family dinner, Azula didn't smirk when they walked through the main dining room. Everyone in the family knew about the bet, and Azula's 'outfit' had been passed around between their apartments in the royal palace. She'd been ribbed mercilessly about it for a week. Now they would all see that Azula's boasts hadn't been empty.

Every table in that dining room had at least one noblewoman wearing a blindingly atrocious robe or dress.

As they settled into their seats in the private room, they were all uncharacteristically silent, except the children, who happily chattered to each other about the sweet milk they would be able to drink with their dinner.

Katara broke the adults' silence by gently poking Azula's side. She was smiling. "Stop it. I can _hear_ your smugness."

"I hope you realize that makes no sense," Azula said with utmost dignity.

"I can't believe it." Zuko stared at her in utter shock. "I'm the Fire Lord and I can make people do a lot of things, but that was the scariest exercise of power I've ever seen. They're all wearing robes I had special made to be as ugly as possible…by choice." His horror increased. "Make them stop."

"Too late," Azula replied, enjoying Mai's palpable disgust with relish. "It'll probably take a few years to go out of fashion now. I think I'll have a few more made for my own enjoyment." She sneered at him and watched dawning realization on his face with glee. "I had a set made for you, in fact. That's my no-fine-print request: wear it to the next festival."

Zuko looked at her in helpless horror.

Ursa shook her head as Iroh put his head in his hand and laughed silently into it. She looked at her children and said, "I thought you two would outgrow your destructive natures when you became adults. Next time, please just light a tapestry on fire."


	6. Breaking the news

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Katara returns to the Southern Water Tribe after starting her relationship with Azula. She doesn't expect to have to break the news to Aang as well as her family.

Aang was the last person Katara expected to see as she stepped off of the Fire Nation steamer that had brought her back to the South Pole. Despite (or maybe because of) the bad way they'd parted, she was happy to see him. He had grown up just in the months that they'd been apart, and he was as tall as Sokka now.

He was welcome. She'd missed her friend while she was away; maybe she'd missed him longer than that because he wasn't much of a friend when he was trying to be her boyfriend. She'd missed him much the same way she'd missed her home. She gave Aang a welcoming smile as she stepped back onto the South Pole shore. Katara didn't expect Aang to pull her in for a hug. She'd wanted to greet her family first.

She also didn't expect Aang to pull their bodies flush together in a less-than-chaste embrace.

Apparently Aang the friend hadn't come to see her. Aang the expecting lover had. Even though she'd broken up with him half a year ago! Her pleasure at seeing him melted into ire. How in the world could he think she would want him to do this?

Katara pushed him away but didn't have time to say anything as Sokka seized her up in a crushing hug. Gran Gran seemed so small in her arms, but she was a solid, welcome presence. Hakoda drew her close too for a warm hug that drew tears to her eyes. Even severe Pakku gave her a smile and a stiff but gentle hug.

She had so much to tell them. She was so happy about it. She didn't know how she could say it: _Azula is wonderful, and I think I've fallen in love with her, and she's taught me so much about myself_. She wanted them to know how happy she was. She wanted them to share that happiness.

And then Aang stepped into the cluster of her family and grabbed her hand with a wide smile. Behind her anger with him, she was discomfited. It had been hard enough dealing with him when she'd first broken up with him. She hadn't expected to have to do it twice.

"Hey, we have a surprise for you!" Sokka said. He practically yanked her across the ice towards the village. It was a relief when Aang dropped her hand.

Katara looked across the bay and took in the differences from the last time she'd been here. With the help of Pakku, they moved the village farther off the bay. There was more space on the bay and more space for the village, which had doubled in size since the war. Katara happily greeted her friends and family as Sokka dragged her through the new village.

He stopped in front of an igloo and motioned. "Tada!"

Katara looked from Sokka back to the igloo. She ducked into the entry and gasped in pleasure. It was her own hut! And then her pleasure crashed into uncomfortable anger. The furs that were her bed had obviously been slept in. Aang's clothes were spread across the floor of the hut, and his glider was balanced against the whale rib along one wall.

She hadn't even had a chance to live in her own hut, and he'd moved in it!

Only out of her respect for Aang and their friendship did she not turn around and smack him across the face. How dare he?! What spiritual plane did he live on to think she would ever want this, even if they were together, which _they_ _weren't_!

"Come on!" Sokka steered her back to the village and into a larger igloo that had the marks of Pakku's construction. It was colder in this building, and smoke hazed the air. All of the villagers were able to fit inside, and they passed around food and drink in celebration of Katara's return.

She'd missed her home so much, despite the whirlwind of her time away from the South Pole. Katara couldn't regret her trip, but she was glad to be back.

Not five minutes into the party, Aang stood up and cleared his throat. Sokka began making violent nixing gestures. Katara realized what Aang was about to do and felt every bit of anger she'd felt so far descend upon her shoulders and heat up her chest and face.

He was oblivious. He went on one knee and said, "Katara, these last months have been the loneliest in my life. I never want to be apart from you again. Will you marry me?"

She stood up, clenched her fists, and didn't think for a second about his dignity any more. "How dare you!"

Aang balked, but she was angry he was so surprised. She was so angry she didn't think about the fact that the igloo had gone dead silent.

"I broke up with you, you idiot! Why would I want to marry you?!"

"But I thought—" He had the nerve to look wounded.

"I said I didn't want to be with you, Aang!" she shouted.

"You just needed time—"

"I found someone else!" she screamed.

The silence was palpable. Everyone was holding their breath. Katara was too angry to be embarrassed by her announcement. Aang's expression began to shift too: into anger. "You cheated on me?!"

"It's not cheating!" she shouted. She gestured as she spoke. Her voice was tight. "I broke up with you. I went to the Fire Nation. I found someone else."

"Who?!" Aang gasped.

"That's none of your business!"

"Was it Zuko?"

"No!" she shouted.

"Who was it?" Aang was shouting now.

"It doesn't matter!"

"Tell me!"

" _Azula_!"

Katara saw her father's face go white. Sokka heaved a strangled gasp behind her. And now the embarrassment came...and with it, sorrow. She'd wanted to tell them so badly so they would be happy for her. This wasn't the way to do that. She hesitated, trying to think of something to say to make them understand, but Aang distracted her entirely.

He started to laugh. "Two girls can't have sex," he said.

Katara's rage returned ten-fold. How could he have so many past lives, have seen so much of the world, and still think that? Katara's anger stemmed not just the fact that Aang could dismiss her relationship with Azula like that but also from the chauvinistic egoism of that statement. Never in her life would she have thought Aang could be so sexist.

She spoke before she even realized what she was saying. "Azula and I manage to be together as lovers a hundred times better than you and I ever did!"

Aang went white.

Katara immediately realized what she'd just admitted in front of her entire tribe. She retreated from the igloo and strode across the snow, blinking back tears of anger and embarrassment. She couldn't believe this! She'd been so happy to come back home again, so joyful about her news, and Aang had ruined it all in a matter of minutes. Oh, no, she'd said that in front of _everyone._ She wanted to go throw herself into the bay in mortification.

Katara stopped inland from the village. Crunching footsteps sounded behind her.

"Go away, Aang!"

"Whoa, cool it. I'm pretty sure Aang's foot is so far in his mouth he won't be walking anywhere for a while."

Katara whirled on her brother. Sokka had his hands up, and his smile was gentle. "So, um, before you kill me, I just have to clarify something. When you say Azula, you mean the creepy, crazy, homicidal princess of the Fire Nation that tried to kill us all more than a few times? The one with all the blue fire and lightning?"

The injustice of his words upset her. "She's not like that, Sokka. She changed; she's so good and sweet."

"Good and sweet," he echoed incredulously. "Well, okay. If you insist. But we are talking about the same person?"

Her face tightened as she tried to hold in her tears. Sokka held out his arms. "Hey, I'm not criticizing. She is pretty hot. Bad-dad-bum!"

She collapsed in his arms laughing. Her laughter turned to tears.

"Does she care about you?" Sokka asked after she'd calmed down.

Katara wiped her eyes. "I know it sounds crazy, but she does. And I care about her. She's so vulnerable sometimes, Sokka."

"And apparently good in bed."

Katara groaned against his shoulder. He squeezed her gently. "Hey, no biggie. You only just announced that your current girlfriend is better in the sack than the Avatar."

She groaned louder. "Not helping."

"You might have taken ten years off of Dad's life. Did you see how white he got?"

Katara's eyes filled with tears again. Sokka lost his smile. She looked at her brother. "Are you disappointed?"

Sokka heaved a sigh. "You know, things don't work out like we plan them to. I was totally going to run off with a beautiful girl in the North Pole, and whoops! She's the moon now! And now I have Suki, and I wouldn't trade her for anyone." He patted her shoulder. "You and Aang would have been easier, probably, but it's not worth it if you aren't happy."

She sniffled, smiling despite the disaster of that day. "Sometimes you can be really smart."

Sokka poked her in the shoulder. "Hey, now, that's no way to talk to your big brother."

* * *

A few uncomfortable days later, the captain of the Fire Nation steamer politely knocked on the door of Gran Gran's hut. There Katara sat with her family sharing an awkward meal. Pakku and Gran Gran were quiet. Hakoda was silent in a brooding way, and Sokka tried to carry the conversation for everyone and was failing pretty miserably.

The captain bowed to Katara when he ducked into the hut, prompting owlish blinks from them all. "Princess Azula has asked me to deliver a gift before we sail this evening."

He set down the small wooden chest in his hands. He bowed again. "We will be departing in several hours, but I am at your service until then, Lady Katara."

"Did he just call you 'lady'?" Sokka whispered when the man walked out of the hut.

Katara stared at the chest, for the life of her unable to guess what Azula could have sent her. She also realized that the steamer hadn't just left Capital Bay for the South Pole by chance. Azula had contracted it for her. No wonder they'd let her sleep in a nice cabin in the ship.

Sokka bounced in anticipation. "Can I open it?"

"Now, now, Sokka. The gift is for your sister," Gran Gran rebuked gently.

Katara flipped the latch on the chest and opened it. At the top sat a letter sealed with blue wax. She stared at the seal: a dragon with wings spread. It was so predictable and so perfect. There were a lot of small bundles below the letter, but the letter was what Katara wanted to look at most. She gave her brother a little bit of room to start unpacking the chest as she read the letter.

"Oh, yes!" Sokka gasped. "It's fire berry jam. I love this stuff! And that's dried banana and apple slices. Tea!" He opened the tin and sniffed. He closed it up again and handed it to Pakku, who was a lot more appreciative. Sokka tossed a piece of cloth aside carelessly. Gran Gran picked it up to brush her fingers over it. It was silk, as fine as the cloth that Azula wore every day of her life. Gran Gran had probably never felt cloth so soft.

"Candy. And pickled yams!" Sokka said, hugging the jar close. He pulled out something else near the bottom and snickered. "Aww…she sent you flowers. They're all dried out and squished, but they're flowers." He peeked into the now empty chest. "Where are all the weapons and gory paintings and Fire Nation paraphernalia?"

"Shut up, Sokka," Katara said with a slow smile. She set the letter next to him, and he snatched it up.

He cleared his throat and began to read aloud, trying and failing to imitate Azula:

"'Katara: I hope your journey was comfortable and your stay is enjoyable.'" Sokka glanced at Katara with one eyebrow raised. "Okay, this is a really boring love letter." He continued. "'You are always welcome at Ember Island. I would also welcome any letters you might send. I hope to see you again. Azula.' _Seriously_?"

Sokka flapped the letter, and Katara snatched it from him to smooth it gently between her fingers. He hadn't read it right. He'd missed the hesitation in Azula's characters, the vulnerability in her welcomes that really mean 'please', the need to please she'd hidden in formal words. It was romantic, in Azula's silly awkward way, and Katara loved the unassuming nature of the letter and the gifts. Azula sent them to her not because she expected something in return; she'd done it because she wanted to make Katara happy.

"Well," Gran Gran said. "She sounds like a respectable young woman. When will I meet her?"

Hakoda folded his arms and glowered.


	7. The Hard Choice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Before leaving the South Pole to return to the Fire Nation with Azula, Katara contemplates what direction her life with Azula might take her. Also, in which Katara enjoys watching Azula fail at eating crab.

"Katara!"

She turned her head and smiled at the young man who jogged up to her. "Hi, Nukkuk. What do you need?"

He handed her the basket in his hands. Katara took note of the colored weave in the handles to make sure she remembered to give it back to him. The boy said, "We got a good pot of crabs this afternoon."

"Thanks. I was trying to figure out what to do for dinner."

He smiled shyly and waved as he turned back to help his father distribute more crabs. Katara peeked in the basket and sighed. They'd given her at least seven crabs, twice as many as she needed even with Azula's surprising new appetite. She would have boiled some rice or seaweed with it, but there didn't seem to be any need anymore. A claw reached out of the basket towards her face and she shook the basket and set the top back on firmly.

Katara smiled happily as she imagined Azula trying to eat crab the Southern Water Tribe style. _'What do I do with it in the shell?'_ She nodded and greeted her family and friends and stopped to chat with Uma's husband about their new baby. He wasn't a big man, but he swelled with pride when he talked about his new son.

A few minutes later, Katara ducked into her hut and felt a little shiver of happiness at what she found there. Azula sat on their folded bedroll, concentrating heavily on the half-formed baleen basket in her hands. Ana sat in Azula's lap and tried to help as any self-respecting toddler would. Ana had gotten over her shy quietness and was chattering Azula's ear off. Azula responded at odd intervals, but Katara knew without a doubt Azula was listening.

"Hi, Mommy!" Ana called.

"Hi, sweetheart," Katara replied, earning a happy smile before Ana turned back to watch Azula weave.

Azula's basket was turning out lopsided, but it wasn't bad for a first effort. It would be sturdy enough to hold Azula's small collection of tools and the tools she borrowed in her quest to make her own. Azula had taken to this life so well, so much better that Katara had hoped. She did every task with single-minded concentration, tried every food without complaint, and never said no. Azula had her own flesher, a spearhead that would be lashed to a shaft soon, a leather hole puncher and needle, and several fishing hooks. She'd crafted her own little shoulder bag and was well on her way to finishing that storage basket. She'd fished, hunted, butchered, tanned leather, patched a sealskin tent, and helped construct an igloo.

"That's good," Katara said, thinking about more than the basket.

"It's lopsided," Azula replied with her mouth twisted. She offered a smile immediately after. It was so comforting to see her like this: no makeup, no cares with her hair, wearing casual Water Tribe clothes...especially the betrothal necklace that flushed Katara with pride. She looked soft, as much as Azula would scoff at the idea and probably take it as an insult.

Ana was apparently too comfortable in Azula's lap to leave for a kiss or hug. Katara could understand. Ever since Azula had returned with her firebending and a dragon (trust Azula to way overdo a simple task) she radiated heat. Katara got to monopolize that comfort at night at least. Ana could monopolize it now.

Katara went to the organized chaos of the area of her hut where she kept her cooking stores. She pulled out a few smooth cooking rocks and a metal pot purchased from Azula's steamer, a luxury that transmitted heat better than any other pot she'd used before. Katara dumped a fresh set of coals (another luxury) onto the fire pit and settled close to blow and raise the heat in the coals. She set the rocks in the coals to heat as well.

"I can help with that."

"You'll make it too hot." Katara blew again. "Thank you though." Once more, and the coals glowed red. "Ana, will you find my metal needle and pull out my cooking herb pouch? It has the green beads on the front. Leave them beside the fire pit."

Ana pushed herself out of Azula's lap as Katara ducked outside with the pot. She walked happily through the village to the carefully maintained clean snow they used for fresh water. They had a tank of unfrozen water, but that was precious. If someone had the means to melt snow instead of using the unfrozen water, they left the water for those who couldn't. Katara swept enough snow into her pot, melted it, and froze it. She began her walk back with her heavy burden.

"Let me." Hakoda swept around her from behind, smiled, and took the full pot from her.

"Thanks, Dad."

"Tell your wife we're going on the kayak again bright and early. This time, make sure she leaves her dragon behind."

Katara felt a twitch of fear and immediately brushed it away. There wouldn't be any danger Azula couldn't face. "Take it easy on her."

Hakoda laughed as he ducked into Katara's hut. He set the pot in the hot fire pit and settled down on the floor beside it. "Ah, Nukkuk gave you some of their catch."

"They gave me too much," Katara admitted. "Do you want a few?"

"I'm going to eat with Mimi and her father tonight. Thanks though." Hakoda glanced at Azula's baleen basket. "It's lopsided."

"You are such a clever man," Azula replied dryly as she carefully threaded baleen through the vertical strips. Katara didn't say anything; Azula and her dad could work out their little drama themselves. She lifted her hands and melted the ice in the pot and coaxed it to take on the heat of the coals more easily. It would only take a few minutes to begin boiling.

"Why?" Ana asked, back in the comfortable confines of Azula's lap.

"Because your grandfather pointed out something that is obvious."

"What's obvious?"

"Obvious means well known. It's obvious that you're a little girl."

Ana giggled.

Hakoda met Katara's eyes, and he smiled. He reached out and patted her shoulder. "Goodnight."

"Night night, Gampaw!" Ana pushed out of Azula's lap and gave him a kiss. His smile softened his weathered face. Katara leaned over to give him a kiss too. "Don't look at me," Azula said snidely.

Hakoda gave her a mock scowl as he left. "I wasn't. Goodnight."

Ana resettled next to Katara. She gasped as Katara pushed the top off of the crab basket. "Crab!"

Azula shifted closer and peeked over the edge of the basket. Her perplexity was cute. "Those are crabs?"

"I can't believe you laughed at me the first time we had crab on Ember Island," Katara shot back. She hadn't had a clue what the strips of meat on the plate were. Crab was supposed to come in its shell.

"I know what crabs are," Azula replied with the vague suggestion of an eye-roll. "Those are small and smooth."

"These aren't Northern Crabs. They taste better though. Oh, good job, Ana," Katara said when she saw that Ana had placed her metal needle and the right herb pouch where she'd asked her. Her father had sat on them. Katara picked up the metal needle Ana had retrieved for her. She set it in the hot coals. "No touching."

Ana nodded. Azula did too.

If everyone in the Fire Nation knew Azula could be so unconsciously silly, they would probably die from shock.

The water had begun a slow boil when Katara retrieved the hot needle from the fire pit. She transferred the now hot cooking rocks into the boiling water. She plucked one reaching crab out of the basket and deftly pushed the needle into its shell to kill it. Into the pot it went. She repeated the process with each crab. When she set the top on the pot, she glanced up to see Azula smiling gently at her.

"What?"

"Only you would think to kill a crab before you cook it."

"I would never boil it alive," Katara said. She looked at Azula in dawning horror. "They don't boil them alive in the Fire Nation?"

Azula sighed. "I only remember hearing them scratch around when I slipped into the palace kitchen as a child. But I'll draft a royal decree when we get back: 'All crabs must be rendered unconscious before death by boiling.' Thereafter I will be known as the crab princess."

Princess… Azula, the Fire Nation Princess. Azula, whose Fire Lord brother was looking for a way out. Azula, who had tamed a dragon and was once again the best firebender the world had ever seen. Katara knew that Princess would be quick to change to Fire Lord when they went back to the Fire Nation. She'd had so much joy seeing Azula take on this way of life and so much hope that they could make a life together in both their homes as Azula had promised, but the Fire Lord couldn't travel to the South Pole every year.

Azula had fought so long and so hard for this: glory, as she said. To be more than a birth and death date. Katara could never ask her to give that up.

It was what Pakku had told her: don't make the same mistake he did. They'd had long conversations about this issue before, and he'd always surprised her with his advice to leave behind the South Pole if she had to. Sacrifice for love and hold on to Azula for dear life. Azula was worth giving up her home. It would hurt, but it would be worth it for Azula's happiness and for raising a family together.

"Is it really that upsetting?"

Katara pushed all that away. She would enjoy Azula here as long as she could. "I guess it's not a big deal to you since they serve the meat already removed in the Fire Nation."

Azula cocked her head warily. "How do you eat it here?"

As much as she enjoyed that look on Azula's face, Katara realized she'd have to feed two children that night. She sighed as she pulled small linen pouches from her herb store. Just opening the little green-beaded bag made her hungry. She flicked a precious pinch her favorite seasonings into the again-boiling water and set the top back on the pot. She wished they had the heavily spiced butter paste they used in the Fire Nation to boil the crabs into a stew, but clean crab was good on its own.

"Ana, what did you learn at school today?"

Ana chattered happily about her day. She said a few words about her lesson, which apparently had been about the differences between winter and summer. The rest of the time she chattered about Azula's dragon. She'd learned a lot of new words in the last week, and every single one of them described that dragon. Katara had twinges of terror every time she realized Ana was at some point going to try to ride it.

"And what did _you_ learn today?" Katara asked Azula when she could get a word in edgewise.

"That training a dragon is a headache."

No wonder Azula was a little hoarse.

"How did that go?"

"No one died," Azula replied lightly. "How was your day?"

"No one died," Katara echoed. She smiled though. She'd been busy, but it wasn't the breakneck feeling of fearing they'd go under if she didn't get everything on her list done that day. Hama and Verack had taken better to this small village than she'd hoped, and Nema was willing to show them much of what they needed to know. They would be ready for her to leave in a few days. It felt like an absolute goodbye.

She used her sleeve to pull the top off of the pot. The crabs were dusky pink instead of their original brown color.

"Ana, will you bring me the tongs on top of the chest?"

"Where?" Ana asked, but she'd already turned and seen them. She bounded to her feet and managed to run the three steps between Katara and the tongs.

"Thank you." Katara fished a crab out of the pot with the tongs. Ana and Azula both watched her in fascination. Katara waited for it to cool enough to touch, stripped its viscera, peeled off its shell, scooped off the gills, and split the remainder in half. She dropped the trash into the basket they would all share. The carapace of the crab she set aside; the kids liked to dye them and carve them. She dropped one half of the crab onto a plate and handed it to Azula. Azula stared at the leg cluster in obvious perplexity. It was enough to coax Katara to laughter.

"Let me set up this little princess, and then I'll help you," she promised, dropping a kiss on Ana's head.

Azula plucked up the cluster and frowned at it. "I don't need help. I'm just not sure where to start."

"Then watch me." Katara stripped off the smallest leg and handed it to Ana to distract her long enough for Katara to get her crab meat ready to eat. There would be a temper tantrum if Ana realized Katara was doing all of the work. She was raising an independent little girl, wasn't she? Katara deftly reduced the rest of the crab to meat and handed the plate over to Ana, who was chattering about someone who'd been pinched at some point.

"That's why we don't put our hands in a crab pot," Katara said.

Ana nodded seriously. "I bet it hurted."

"I bet it did hurt."

Meanwhile, Azula frowned as she snapped the crab leg in her hands. She broke the meat inside too and looked hopelessly at the two halves in her hand. Katara held out her hands, and Azula glared at her. "I'm not an invalid. I can feed myself without help."

"Uh huh. Start with the tip of the leg first to pull the sinew out."

"Eat," Azula said seriously.

"Eat!" Ana shouted with a laugh.

"Inside voice," Katara reminded her. Ana giggled sweetly. Katara smiled as she turned to her food. She'd finished a two clusters when Ana, happily humming, finished her food.

"More!"

"If you want more, you have to ask like a polite little girl," Katara told Ana. Ana pouted, attempted a staring contest, and then finally mumbled something that approximated, "May I pwease have some more crab?"

Katara began to work on the largest leg in her cluster and was stunned to see Azula—who had been painstakingly removing the entire bit of meat from the largest crab leg on her first cluster—set her piece on Ana's plate.

"What do you say?" asked Katara, trying very hard not to cry. Yet another thing about her wife she hadn't dared hope. Azula had taken to Ana so well. Ana would be calling Azula her mother soon too. Katara hoped she got to see the first time; she wanted to see the realization cross Azula's face. She wanted other children too, until their hut was loud and happy and…

"Thanks!"

"You are very welcome, Ana," Azula said. At least she was polite with children.

It took Azula most of the dinner to clean her half cluster of meat. Katara had already eaten four clusters and had cleaned four more, which she handed over. Azula smiled sheepishly and polished that off in no time, but Katara gave her the last of the crab meat by then. "Thank you."

"You've been eating a lot more."

"I've been a little overzealous with my firebending," Azula admitted with a slow, wicked smile. "And any fire needs fuel."

And there it was, the quiet self-assurance that had been missing since the war. It expanded Azula's presence, made her dangerous and beautiful, and Katara loved to see it. Part of her couldn't wait to see Azula in the Fire Nation again. The muted self-esteem would explode, redouble, and Azula would be a force to behold. She would lead her nation and lead it fiercely.

As Pakku had told her, Katara would just have to hold on tight and go along for the ride. Azula was worth it.


	8. Leaves on the vine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Iroh considers his daughter after a visit to the South Pole. (Takes place some months after MES ends.)

It was a rare thing to see Azula alone. She sat in Ursa's garden cradling a cup of tea in her hands, and she watched the rustling leaves of the palm trees contemplatively. She'd gained a new stillness during her pregnancy that Iroh had never seen in her before. Maybe it wouldn't have been so surprising, but she had been at the South Pole until a month ago. She'd returned enormously pregnant and strangely content.

When he approached her table, she looked up at him without a shift in her expression. Her golden gaze was unusually gentle.

"May I join you?" he asked.

She nodded and sipped her tea. Azula wasn't being unwelcoming; he had no doubt she would have sent him away if she didn't want company.

Iroh waved away the servant after the man placed a second cup down for him. He poured his own tea and took a breath. Jasmine, and by the hint of mint it was a blend from Gaoling. It wasn't his favorite tea, but his daughter was fond of it. Azula had not spoken so he asked her, "How are you feeling?"

"Like an over-inflated war balloon," Azula replied. Despite her words, she seemed happy. Far too happy to be ready to have that baby. She was still carrying it high, as pregnant as she was. She was beautiful and very womanly like this. She reminded him of Ursa, even with the sharper planes of her face and the unmasked intensity of her eyes.

Azula took a breath and winced. "And tired of my child using my internal organs as kicking practice."

Iroh watched the subtle flutter across Azula's belly. He itched to reach out and feel the movement of her unborn child, but there were certain liberties no one ever took with Azula—unless that person was Katara. She glanced at him, sighed, and rolled her eyes. "Honestly. I won't miss my body serving as the medium of communication between a child and the world. Touch if you want."

It was enough to bring tears to his eyes; Azula made no comment. Iroh placed his hand on Azula's silk-covered belly and grinned at the flutter against his hand.

Azula sipped her tea. "Since I've returned, the council members have all switched seats. All the women arrive early to sit as close to me as possible, and they all giggle and gasp when they see my child trying to stick its foot through my uterus. If Zuko extends his vacation, I will kill him and then resurrect him from the dead to become the fulltime Fire Lord again."

Iroh laughed at the mental picture of the council room and then because Azula had been so affectionate with her threat against her brother. The baby kicked again before Iroh withdrew his hand. He had no doubt Katara kept careful track of the baby's growth; he wondered how much Katara could tell about the child. "Do you know if it's a boy or a girl?"

Azula studied her teacup. "Katara tried to keep that secret for all of a week. It's a boy."

A boy. A son. A grandson.

Azula met his eyes. "May we name him Lu Ten?"

He had never expected it, and his surprise melted into sorrow and joy and love. Iroh began to weep. Though he couldn't speak, he nodded. Azula touched his hand, and he took it and squeezed.

* * *

The baby was crying in his arms, the soft cry of a newborn. He was a quiet baby, but he was strong and healthy. Iroh cradled that tiny velvety dark head in his hand and soothed him. "Lu Ten," he said. His voice was thick, but he smiled as the baby opened his blue eyes.

Iroh began to sing.

"Leaves from the vine  
Falling so slow  
Like fragile, tiny shells  
Drifting in the foam.  
Little soldier boy  
Come marching home.  
Brave soldier boy  
Comes marching home."

He said, "Welcome home, little boy."


	9. The arts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Ursa tries, and fails, to make Azula respect the arts: flower arranging, tea ceremony, poetry, and painting. Timeline throughout MES.

There was a certain art to the arrangement of flowers. Often one tiny bouquet could center a huge room or set the tone for a massive party. Color, species, and arrangement could change the meaning and feng shui of a filled vase entirely. Or that was what all of Ursa's tutors told her. Honestly, flower arranging was the least interesting of all the arts, but it seemed like the best contrast the war and violence that her daughter seemed to revel in.

Until Ursa looked over and studied the vase Azula had arranged.

White on red, the entirety of it. The red was the fire lily, which could have several interpretations aside from the obvious one. There were also red carnithians, which could symbolize anything from life's blood to the body's heart. The white flowers were also lilies. Usually a cream colored hybrid was better for a paler contrast to the brilliancy of the fire lily. (The fire lily was not in any way related to the true lily. Ursa remembered because she had failed a flower arranging test in her youth based upon that single question.) The fire lilies completely overshadowed them, and they were scattered throughout in a swirling pattern, arranged high enough to show their brilliant orange sides. The carnithians were buried deep in the white lilies in pools of brilliant red.

"What does that mean?" Ursa asked.

Azula looked at her vase with a slow smile. "It's the conquest of the Air Nomads."

White for air, the true lily for peace. Red for fire and war…and the carnithians were red blood spilt by that fire and war. Ursa looked at the arrangement again. It was gruesome. She didn't know what to say, especially with Azula's expression so smug.

Maybe they would try tea ceremony next.

* * *

When Ursa sat down across from Azula, Azula didn't offer her a cup, as was custom. Instead, she kept the entire set on her side. Instead of a liquid tea, she removed a whisk and frothed up one of the Fire Nation's bitterest teas into foul foam that Ursa had always hated. Iroh enjoyed it, but Iroh had never met a tea he didn't like.

That particularly tea preparation was attached to darker events. It was usually made during funerals, sometimes prepared for a grieving mother that had miscarried. Why was Azula preparing it for Ursa now?

Azula carefully portioned out the frothy tea. She spun the cup to Ursa's right inward first, which was wrong for several reasons. The cup to Ursa's right should have been her own. The preparer always prepared his own cup first to symbolize safety from poison, as the preparer would drink first as well. The cups should be turned laterally, not inward. When the cup was turned completely, Ursa saw the brilliant red vertical stripe on it. When Azula turned the other cup inward, it had a stark white stripe on it, the color of death. The cup to Ursa's left, the side of death.

From Ursa's perspective, the right tea cup that should have been her own was Azula's, marked with the stripe of the bringer of death. The left tea cup, Ursa's cup, was presented to Ursa's weak side, marked with the color of the dead.

This was a tea ceremony that marked the beginning of a ceremonial suicide, which involved cutting out one's own diaphragm and giving one's head to their opponent. Ursa was in the position of the individual who would end their own life. Ursa shot her daughter an outraged stare, but Azula continued each careful gesture with sober concentration.

Why was it a surprise that her daughter had studied this ceremony extensively? She'd probably practiced the appropriate beheading technique too: leaving a strip of skin at the throat so the head wouldn't fall off and roll away. Ursa let Azula continue to the end, but she didn't reach for her cup. In the real ceremony, the person committing suicide would drink before death. The beheader would drink after the suicide.

Maybe poetry writing next… But Ursa was already anticipating an odyssey marked by war, murder, and death.

* * *

"Look at this."

Ursa handed Iroh a long, carefully inked scroll. He set down his book and rolled the scroll out to its full length. Azula's handwriting wasn't beautiful if only for its perfection, but she could fit a lot on a page.

Iroh ticked his head with each line, and his lips twitched into a smile then a frown. He probably only read one stanza before he set the scroll down. "May I keep this?"

"Why would you want to?" she asked him, remembering the awful tragedy inscribed on it.

"It's actually a rather clever retelling of that legend." He picked up the scroll again. "The rhythm in the meter is flawless, at least for the first stanza."

"It's about war," Ursa pointed out.

"Azula grew up on war."

"Zuko doesn't think about it all the time!"

"Zuko is much different than Azula," Iroh said. The only reason Ursa didn't get angry at his audacity to dare tell her something she obvious already knew was because he was downcast as he said it.

He wanted to tell Azula the truth. Ursa didn't think it was a good idea, not yet, but she did understand his desire. It mirrored her own quiet wish to come to him at night, slide into his bed, and find comfort in his arms again. That wouldn't do. It wasn't the right time, and Ursa admitted to herself that the time might never be right for them.

"What am I going to do with her?" she asked weakly. "She's so unhappy."

"We can only help Azula as much as she wishes us to. The fact she's here, living with us…" Iroh trailed off and touched the scroll. "In time, she'll find her happiness, but I don't think we'll have much to do with it."

Maybe it was true, but Ursa would do everything she could to distract Azula from her training and her constant research. Maybe she would try painting next.

* * *

Of all the things Ursa expected from her daughter, she didn't expect Azula to simply leave the palace. The only reason she hadn't gone after her was because Azula took her servants with her. She was going to live on Ember Island, away from them. This wasn't what Ursa wanted, and she thought she could kill Iroh for telling Azula the way he had.

But when she returned to her quarters, she found him waiting for her with tears on his face.

She hadn't factored in his hurt. Ursa reached out to him, and he yanked her against his body. He was muscular still, but his body had softened with age. It still amused her that she was a bit taller than he; her first memory was of him larger than life. Iroh's beard scratched her cheek, and his tears were cold against her skin.

Azula was his daughter, and she had never trusted him enough to tell him the truth. "I love you," she told him, as she had never told him before. She'd been too afraid to trust, too afraid to let go, too afraid to rely on him to protect her and her children. So she'd thrown him aside, kept Azula a secret from him, and never gave him a chance to be the father to Azula that he could have been, the father she deserved.

"Why didn't you tell me?" he asked her. His hands tightened on her back. "Why? I could have protected you. I would have married you. We could have been a family."

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." It was the only answer she could offer.

* * *

_-ten years later-_

"Good morning."

Ursa looked up in surprise to see Azula standing beside her table. She was shockingly pregnant, which was so strange in conjunction with her tight topknot and Fire Lord crest.

"Good morning, sweetie. How are you feeling?"

"Like a waddling turtle duck."

"You look like a cantaloupe on an arrow."

"Thank you. I think." How rare that Azula teased so easily. "I wanted to give you something." She handed Ursa a scroll. It was a thick paper used mostly for water paintings. Was this a little piece of art Ana had crafted?

Ursa untied the scroll and opened it.

It was a dragon painting…of Rakka eating an ostrich horse. Ursa supposed she should be thankful that Azula hadn't crafted an imaginary scene of her dragon eating a person. This truly came as no surprise. Ursa and Iroh had a little bet going on how long it would take Azula to paint one for Ursa since she'd danced her dragon into submission. Iroh had just won that bet.

All in all, it was a pretty little water painting that emphasized Rakka's brilliant blue coils. There was fluidity in the serpentine body that so often liked to cut off all of the garden paths by her apartment. Unfortunately, the red of the ostrich horse and its blood was a particularly brilliant contrast to the cool blue of Rakka's scales.

She lifted her eyes to her daughter in a dower gaze. "How lovely."

Azula smiled, but the expression was oddly gentle. Then she leaned over and kissed Ursa gently on the forehead. She was instantaneously forgiven. Azula had both remained exactly the same and changed so much. Ursa would never trade one for the other.


	10. Everyday domestic argument

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Takes place after MES ends. An everyday argument between two headstrong women.

"Ana spilled ink on the couch."

"The what?"

Katara glanced at her wife. "The couch. That thing we sit on in the sitting room."

Azula slowly cocked her head with one eyebrow up. "That is a settee, not a couch."

"It's a couch," Katara challenged. What did Azula have to have such a hard head about these stupid things?

"It's a settee."

"Azula, they're exactly the same thing."

"I assure you, they're quite different. Perhaps their denotation may be the same, but the connotation is quite varied."

Katara wasn't sure if the words or Azula's dignity as she said them were funnier. "What does that even mean?"

Azula, bless her, was always patient enough to explain herself. "While the words may on paper be the same, they have much different implications."

That was just ridiculous. "It's a _couch_! How is there any implication?!"

"A couch may be found in some poor pauper's house. A settee is found in the Fire Lord's sitting room."

Katara folded her arms; she was irritated by that implication. "Oh, I see. This is a status thing. You're just saying your couch is more expensive than someone else's couch by calling it a settee."

Azula's jaw tightened. "I'm calling it a settee because it _is_ a settee. It is _not_ a couch."

"You just said they mean exactly the same thing!"

"I didn't say that at all. You're twisting my words—"

"And you're being a snooty princess—"

"I am a Fire Lord—"

"Oh, I'm sorry. I guess you didn't understand my implication—"

"You—!" Azula glowered. She took a breath, opened her mouth, and her shoulders drooped. She began to pout and repeated, "You're twisting my words."

"Admit it. It's a couch."

"It's a settee!"

"It's a couch."

Azula's lips pursed and her nose twitched, a sure indicator that she was getting angry. Katara was more amused than anything at this point. She could just imagine Azula thinking about saying: 'I'm the Fire Lord, and proclaim it's a settee! So there!'

Katara started to giggle. "I can't believe you're mad about this."

"You shouldn't argue with your pregnant wife. And you can be very irritating," Azula grumbled, but she softened immediately.

"Hey!" Katara gasped, but she started laughing.

Azula's expression thawed somewhat, but Katara sensed they'd be revisiting this issue. She wrapped her arms around Azula's neck and leaned her head against Azula's shoulder. She reached out to gently rub Azula's rounded belly. "Anyway, Ana spilled some ink on that-thing-that-I-call-a-couch-and-you-call-a-settee. I made her clean it up."

"How much more of a mess did she make doing that?"

Admittedly, it had been a lot worse, but the lesson had been in taking responsibility, not in the proper way to clean a fancy-pants piece of furniture. Katara kissed Azula's neck and concentrated on the son that shifted in Azula's womb. He was a healthy boy, and Katara had a shiver of anticipation that he would be a firebender. She'd been guessing right on that for a few years, but she didn't want to say anything to Azula in case she was disappointed.

A firebender son… Katara couldn't wait.

"I love you."

"I love you too. You're still irritating."

"And it's a couch."

"You'll be sleeping on it if you keep that up."

Katara gasped in mock anger, and Azula finally began to laugh.


	11. Laza, daughter of Tazu

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Laza, daughter of Tazu, is destined for marriage to the man of her father's choosing at sixteen. Too bad she's in love with someone unsuitable: a woman and a commoner.

The first time Laza saw Kili, she thought she was a servant. That was the only thing to explain a girl standing in a ring with a mongoose dragon so fearlessly, flicking her whip to direct the angry animal away from her. Servants were much braver than other people, she knew. Laza leaned against the railing and watched, eyes wide, as the mongoose dragon attacked and retreated in turn until it settled in the corner and hissed in quiet submission.

The girl in the ring—she wore trousers and a sleeveless tunic like a boy—turned and started at the sight of her. "Who are you?" she asked.

Laza stared back at her. She expected the other girl to vault over the railing and was quite disappointed when she opened and closed the gate instead.

"You're supposed to bow to me," Laza said.

The other girl raised a dark eyebrow. "Who are you?" she asked again.

"I'm Laza, Tazu's daughter."

The other girl shook her head.

"Zimani is my brother-in-law."

Now the other girl's face showed recognition. "You're the youngest daughter?" she asked.

Laza nodded.

"I'm Kili," she said. She smiled, and Laza went still at the sight. She'd never seen someone's face open up quite so quickly. "And I don't bow to prissy noble girls."

Laza followed her into the barn. "Why do you wear that?"

"What?"

"Tazu says women's arms aren't supposed to be seen. Princess Azula always wears sleeves, even in sparring practice. But she ties her sleeves. All the other girls tie their sleeves too even though they can't firebend like Princess Azula. All the teachers hate it. Tazu says sleeve ties are vulgar."

"Tazu says a lot," Kili replied. "What do you think?"

Laza stared at Kili, startled by the question. She had no idea how to answer. Kili gave her a vague smile and motioned her away. "I have work to do."

"Whose servant are you?" Laza asked.

Kili heaved a big sigh. "I'm Geno's daughter. He owns this farm."

"Oh," Laza said. She wasn't sure if she'd insulted a commoner by asking if she was a servant, and by the time she'd pondered that, Kili was gone.

* * *

Laza didn't really mean to go back almost a week later, but she'd been loitering around the edges of the farm and caught sight of Kili. And then her feet had taken her to the strange girl. Now she followed Kili into the barn and talked to her back. For the most part, Kili ignored her. It was a lot like being at school.

"Princess Azula bends blue fire. Tazu says no woman needs to firebend, but Princess Azula is so good at it."

Finally Kili glanced over her shoulder at Laza. "My aunt serves in the Tenth regiment of the Fire Nation navy. She would fight Tazu to hear him say she doesn't need fire."

"Tazu means noblewomen," Laza explained.

"Can you firebend?" Kili asked her.

Laza nodded, uncertain by the attention she'd finally gotten. Kili raised her eyebrows. She called out down the stables, "I'm going out for a bit."

They walked to a packed earth ring. Kili sat down. She waved her hand. "Let me see it."

"Oh." Laza was vaguely discomfited. "I'm not very good."

"I can't firebend at all," Kili said with a smile. "Let me see what 'not very good' means."

Laza hesitated. Then she performed one of the simpler katas she knew by heart; Princess Azula had probably been doing this kata since she was a baby. Laza's fire was weak, and even then she had trouble controlling it, but when she'd finished Kili stomped her feet on the ground and clapped her hands in applause. "Bravo!"

Laza blushed. "It was bad. Princess Azula—"

Kili interrupted her. "You aren't Princess Azula. You're Laza. And that was pretty good to me."

* * *

Laza went almost every day after lessons to talk to Kili. She'd never been able to talk to anyone before. The other noble girls thought she was stupid, but Kili talked to her in turn and smiled. Granted, she smiled at things Laza hadn't meant to be funny, but she smiled. She _looked_ at Laza. She touched her—little pats and squeezes that meant friendship. The touches had been coming more and more frequently, as had Kili's smiles.

Soon she spent her days dreaming about what she would tell Kili next. And her daydreams shifted to thinking about Kili's strong arms, or her easy laugh or her white teeth or her certain confidence and strength sitting on the back of a mongoose dragon. Kili was brave and strong and independent.

She dreamed about Kili at home; she dreamed about Kili during meals; she dreamed about Kili during lessons. She looked forward to every afternoon that she could slip away to see her. She thought of her all the time and was happy to have that secret joy to hold close. Kili was different. Kili was interesting. Kili liked her.

Laza was thinking of Kili when her history teacher called on her to answer a question about Sozin's conquest of the Air Nomads. She bumbled the answer, and Princess Azula's glare was sharp enough that Laza felt it pierce her heart. But even in that, she enjoyed it only because she could tell Kili about it.

"Fuck Azula," Kili said that afternoon.

Laza gasped in terror. "You can't say that!"

Kili raised her hands. "Fuck Azula!" she shouted. She turned in a circle with her hands raised. "I'm not dead," she said when she completed her circle.

"But Princess Azula—"

"Laza, do something for me. When you talk to me today, don't say anything that starts with 'Princess Azula' or 'Tazu says'."

Laza opened her mouth and had to close it again. Kili looked at her and laughed for some reason. "The look on your face," she said not unkindly. Laza smiled back at her uncertainly.

* * *

When she turned fifteen, Tazu set up her first marriage interview. She had no idea what was happening, but she arrived home from the royal academy to be primped and put in her best robes. Her bodyservant, a sweet woman who had been the closest thing Laza had ever had to a mother, looked at her with tears in her eyes.

"What do I do?" Laza asked her. Her eyes were wide in the mirror.

Hana kissed her head gently. "Just be yourself, little lady."

That was the silliest advice anyone had ever given her. Laza's sisters and all the older girls at the academy said you had to seduce a good husband. She didn't really know what that meant, but all the girls were giggly when they said it. Laza's sister, Taza, told her to bat her eyelashes and giggle at whatever the man said.

She stepped into the little room her marriage interview was in, closed the door, and balked as she saw the man sitting at the little table.

He was old. He was older than Tazu. He was fat, and he looked at her like she was a tasty meal. It made her shiver, and not in the pleasant way the sight of Kili's sweaty silk-covered back made her shiver. This was a bad shiver.

She pasted on a smile, batted her eyelashes, and tripped over her robes.

He looked at her in surprise. Laza could sense Tazu's palpable anger. He was hiding behind a screen in one wall to watch; her sisters had told her he would do this. Laza collected herself, tittered, and sat down. The old man still gave her an odd look, but he smiled soon enough.

"Laza," he said. His voice was reedy and soft. It was a good voice, surprisingly. "What do you like to do?"

"Oh, nothing," she said with a titter. Raza had told her that men liked their women empty, but the man across from her gathered his brow. It made him look like he had a beard over his eyes. The thought made her giggle, which made his brow gather further.

She quickly reached for the tea. Her wide sleeves dragged across the sugary topping on the pastries on the table. She jerked her arm up to avoid that and ended up upending the entire pot of tea on the old man across from her. She gasped in horror and quickly covered her emotion with a titter.

The man stood up, his silk robes dripping, and walked out of the room. He didn't come back.

Laza was just beginning to realize it had been an absolute disaster.

She usually waited until the end of royal academy classes to slip away to visit Kili at her father's farm, but Laza just walked out of Tazu's estate that evening. He was so angry she doubted he'd miss her anyway. It was dark by the time she'd arrived at the trade district. The boy who opened the door of the big merry house beside the mongoose dragon farm gaped at her.

"Hey, Kili," he called over his shoulder. "Your cute noble girlfriend is here!"

A moment later, Kili had shoved the boy out of the doorway. She looked at Laza's robes and her makeup and frowned. "Come in, Laza. Are you okay?"

Laza nodded with a happy smile.

"Have you eaten dinner?"

"No."

Kili motioned her into the comfortable house. The rooms were cluttered with soft furniture and silky wall hangings. It was comfortable and merry, and Laza was comfortable there. She smiled at the four people sitting at the table in the dining room. "Hi." She bowed. "I'm Laza, daughter of Tazu, son of Tazu."

The boy who had answered the door grinned at her. "Hello, Laza daughter of Tazu, son of Tazu. Ow!" He scowled at Kili, who said, "This is my stupid little brother, my cousin, and my parents."

Kili patted the cushion next to her. Laza sat down and her stomach rumbled at the smell of the food across the table.

"So, um, to what do we owe the pleasure of your presence?" Kili's father asked her.

"I felt like it," she replied.

Kili's parents exchanged looks. Kili quickly said, "Laza goes to the Royal Academy for Girls."

Kili's mother frowned. "They wouldn't admit Kili, even though she easily passed the entrance exams."

"Of course," Laza replied. "You aren't nobles."

A heavy silence settled over the table. Laza wasn't sure why she'd provoked that response. "Most of the noble girls in the school only pay attention in marriage preparation courses anyway. Princess Azula doesn't take those. She likes history and firebending. She's smarter and better than any of the other girls. She's going to be Fire Lord someday. She won't have to impress her husband."

Kili's family members were all goggling at her. Kili's father finally gathered himself to say, "But isn't Prince Zuko to inherit?"

It did present a bit of an issue, but Laza had the unshakable knowledge that Princess Azula was destined for everything. She said, "Princess Azula will win."

Killi's parents exchanged another look, and Laza helped herself to another helping of sweet tuber.

"Win what, my dear?"

"Agni Kai. Against whoever is Fire Lord when she wants the throne."

There was a long moment of silence, but Laza didn't mind. The food was exceptional. Finally, Kili cleared her throat uncomfortably. "What's your favorite class, Laza?"

She considered it for a moment. "I like physics."

"Like arithmetic?" Kili's father asked her.

"It uses arithmetic and calculus," Laza agreed. "But I like being able to know why things move like they do. We started with the acceleration of any object that falls. It's so clean. Of course there are confounding variables, but my teacher doesn't want to go into that detail; I wish she would though. My teacher says we'll start learning more about combustion next chapter. I'm glad because vectors are so simple. Once you've done one problem, you've done all the rest."

Everyone at the table was staring at her again. Had she said something wrong? She continued onto a more comfortable topic.

"Princess Azula likes history best. She can recite every Fire Lord in history, and she really likes the history of dragons and of Agni Kai. She did an oral report on the history of the gong they strike in the royal Agni Kai chamber. It's engraved with something about equality and fire. It was a grand speech, but the teacher was unhappy because she hadn't known about everything Princess Azula talked about."

"Do you speak with Princess Azula often?" Kili's mother asked.

"Oh, no," Laza gasped at the thought. "Sometimes she glares at me if I get a question wrong in class. She only talks Ty Lee and Mai, and she only talks to them because they're dangerous too. Mai wears knives in her sleeves, and Ty Lee took away Kazi's firebending one day during class. It came back later, but Kazi was _so_ upset. The other girls say Princess Azula keeps nonbender friends because she doesn't want anyone outshining her in firebending lessons, but who could? She bends blue fire! It's so hot it rushes. Normal fire kind of crackles, but Princess Azula's fire roars."

"I see," Kili's mother said. Laza smiled back at her, and the woman started. She returned the smile, and when she did, she looked a little like Kili.

They were all very nice to her, but Kili was very nice so it made sense.

After dinner, Kili walked her out of the house. She walked Laza out to the street, paid for a carriage, and sent her off with a gentle smile and the words, "Come again anytime." Laza realized she'd forgotten to tell Kili about her failed marriage interview when she stepped back into Tazu's estate.

The next day she went straight to see Kili to tell her about the marriage interview. She could make Kili laugh, and she liked to see Kili's white teeth against her tanned face.

"I had a marriage interview. That's why I came last night, but I forgot to tell you," she said.

Kili dropped the bucket of meat slop she'd been carrying. It splattered everywhere and prompted Laza to stagger back to avoid getting her robes dirty. "A marriage interview?" Kili bent to clean up the mess with her bare hands. "How old are you?"

"I turned fifteen a few days ago."

Kili looked up at her in surprise. "Why didn't you say anything? Happy birthday."

"Tazu says the only birthday that's important in a woman's life is her sixteenth birthday."

A look of unhappiness passed across Kili's face. "Hence the marriage interview, I guess."

"Who are you married to?" Laza asked the older girl.

Kili shucked the pail of nasty meat and gristle into a mongoose dragon's pen with a flex of her muscles. She glanced back at Laza. "I'm not married."

"But you're _old_!" Laza gasped.

"I'm eighteen," Kili replied. She seemed more amused than upset. Laza stared at her, unable to comprehend how an eighteen year old girl wasn't married.

"But you're engaged?" It would make sense if her betrothed was at war.

"Nope," Kili said. "I'm waiting to fall in love like normal people do."

"But my sisters say love is a myth."

"I'm pretty sure that's a big fat lie."

Laza frowned as she considered it. She watched Kili dunk her bucket to grab another slop of red meat. "They do lie a lot."

Kili sputtered with laughter for some reason. "You are a very strange girl," she said. She bit her lip. "Who are you marrying then?"

"I'm not marrying him. I was terrible," Laza said. "I'll have to get better to get a husband."

"Better at what?"

"Acting," Laza said. "My sisters say you have to act to get a husband. And then you have to act to keep one."

"Act to keep a husband," Kili echoed.

"Sex," Laza replied. "The great burden that all wives bear."

Kili shook her head. "It's not a burden. It's actually pretty fun if you do it with someone you like."

Laza gasped. "You've done it?"

"Just a couple of times."

"Tazu says a woman can only have sexual relations with her husband after their marriage. He says if a man gets a woman's virginity, he won't want her anymore."

"Tazu sounds like he was born about a thousand years too late." Kili wiped her hands on her trousers and then put her strong grip on Laza's shoulders. She was serious, and Laza stared into her dark eyes, mesmerized. "Listen to me. You can have sex with whoever you want. Your body is yours, not Tazu's or your betrothed or your husband's. You just have to make sure of the consequences."

"Consequences?"

"Pregnancy," Kili said, her eyebrows climbing. "And some pretty nasty diseases."

"How do you stop those?"

To Laza's shock, Kili slumped against her with a laugh. "Don't they teach you anything in the royal academy?"

"I wasn't being hypothetical," Laza said. "How do you stop those?"

Kili laughed for some reason. "For one, I had sex with girls so no chance of pregnancy. For another, I've only had sex with girls who hadn't had sex before…by chance, before you ask." Before Laza could contemplate that particular revelation, Kili met her eyes. "Don't be afraid to ask your potential partner questions, okay?"

She nodded without really knowing what she'd just agreed to. Kili patted her shoulder.

* * *

Several months and failed interviews later, Laza was bursting with her news. "I had another marriage interview."

Kili splashed her face with water. She was sweating, and she smelled like it. Laza had the strange desire to rub up against her and roll around in her clothes. "Oh?" Kili asked neutrally.

"He was young and handsome."

Kili's neutrality shifted into negativity for some reason. "Oh?" she asked again as she straightened.

Laza giggled.

Kili seemed to lose all motion. She stood strangely straight; the line of her shoulders was uncharacteristically stiff. "When are you getting married?"

Because of Kili's strange response, Laza's merriment dampened. "I'm not. I did better this time, I think, but he wanted to kiss me."

"You didn't let him," Kili replied sharply. If anything, she seemed angrier. "Tazu wouldn't let that kind of thing happen, right?"

Laza was surprised at the thought. "Oh, kissing is only natural. My sisters call it a test before purchase."

"He kissed you," Kili said quietly. Her gaze was sharp.

Laza laughed as she remembered it. "It wasn't so bad. But then he stuck his tongue in my mouth. And I bit him. He was really angry."

"You let him kiss you," Kili said. Laza balked at her tone, surprised by every single one of Kili's responses so far. She'd expected Kili to laugh at her terrible attempts.

"Tazu says—"

" _Fuck_ Tazu!" Kili seized Laza's shoulders. Laza blinked up at her. Her heart started to pound and she went a little lightheaded. "Damn him for throwing you away like this." Kili's looked at her lips, and Laza gasped. Kili looked into her eyes again. She said, "Don't bite my tongue."

And then Kili drew her close and kissed her.

Laza didn't bite her tongue.

"But why?" she whispered later, after Kili had stripped her naked to her waist and kissed far more than her mouth. "Why me?"

"You are the silliest, sweetest girl I have ever met," Kili murmured. She held Laza against her in the stable loft and brushed her fingertips against Laza's back. The touch made Laza shiver. "You deserve better than Tazu or Azula or whatever man he'll try to marry you to next." She caught Laza's gaze and said, "Whatever it is you're doing to hold them off, keep doing it."

She would do it if it meant she could be with Kili.

And she did. For ten years she put them off, balancing the careful edge of disgusting the men and keeping Tazu ignorant. No doubt he knew about Kili; he held it over Laza's head in silent threat: marry her and be disowned. But she gave him enough hope that she'd attract a rich suitor that he didn't disown her yet. Laza wasn't willing to give up yet, even with Kili breathing down her neck to elope.

When opportunity presented itself, it did so with the last person Laza had ever expected. Princess Azula returned to Capital City with all the dark, powerful presence she'd held during the war, and she'd asked for Laza. Tazu and his stupid noble friends expected to control Azula, but Laza knew better. And she saw in this moment an opportunity to make her own way.

She gambled everything, but she did it on a sure win.


	12. Compliments, et cetera.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Between Books 1 and 2, Katara's POV as she ponders her relationship with Azula in several instances.

Katara felt like she was going to come out of her skin as she stepped onto Ember Island shore. Despite herself, worries whispered in the back of her mind: What if Azula changed her mind? What if she found someone else? _What if she doesn't want me anymore?_

She walked into the courtyard of the house on Ember Island without much fanfare. The servants of the house looked at her in surprise, and Katara hurried through the house to the study. She was a little shocked to see that Azula had her feet up on the veranda railing as she perused a book. The pose was just so informal it seemed uncharacteristic. When Azula looked up, her face, usually calm, opened in shock.

She was so beautiful, and Katara wanted so many things from her in that moment that she was as shocked as Azula looked.

"Katara," Azula said. Her chair clacked down on the floor sharply, and she got to her feet to step towards Katara.

They crashed together, and their mouths met hard enough to hurt. But who cared? They were breathing each other's air, moving in one direction for a reason Katara couldn't guess.

Then the floor seemed as good a place as any.

A few minutes later, Katara was aware that they were lying on a surprisingly soft rug, partly beneath Azula's desk. She hadn't expected _that_ to happen. She was suddenly aware that the door of the study was open. There was dead silence in the household.

"Well," Azula said with a slow, predatory smile. Her fingers tugged gently at Katara's nipple, and Katara shivered. She dropped back down for a long kiss, as mortified as she was that they'd just…

"Bed?" Katara asked, almost too embarrassed to pull up and belt her pants closed again. Oof, her body hadn't been quite ready for what they'd done so quickly and fiercely.

"Yes," Azula replied, a word that Katara was starting to know as well as her 'no's.

To Katara's mild surprise, they did wear each other out long enough to bathe and leave the bedroom to eat dinner "like civilized human beings" as Azula put it. Azula's staff blatantly didn't meet Katara's eyes as they brought out dinner. To Katara's surprise, it wasn't a fish meal. The meal centered around white-meat bird. She was further surprised to see Azula eat lightly breaded gizzards.

"A guilty pleasure," Azula admitted, which confirmed what Katara had guessed: it was considered food for the poor.

"Gizzards are good," Katara responded.

Her tribe was careful about their consumption of penguin otters; the flocks that lived around her village were fairly docile and unafraid because of that. And because they were possibly the even stupider than boobies. The eggs were a good nutrient source, but not as highly sought after as albatross eggs. The first time Katara had had a boiled egg from a flying bird, she'd thought there was something wrong with it. The so-called egg 'white' of a penguin egg cooked clear, and it tasted as fishy as the penguins' diet. The gizzard, similarly, was fairly fishy. These little gizzards tasted like the birds they came from were fed on water. Meat had very little flavor in the Fire Nation. Katara kept a private theory that it was the reason why they doused all of their meat in spicy and fruity sauces or breaded them like this one.

Not that she didn't enjoy it. Katara dunked a gizzard in what she assumed was fruity sauce. She coughed in pain as her sinuses cleared and her mouth felt like it caught on fire. She was busy drinking cool water to soothe herself for a few minutes and watched as Azula switched two dipping sauce containers.

Azula ate the spicy sauce without any indication she found it spicy. Katara took a hesitant taste of the one Azula had slid in front of her: fruity, what she'd originally wanted. Katara dunked a gizzard into it.

"Possibly the strangest combination I've seen," Azula remarked mildly.

Katara had to blow her nose from the residual effects of the spicy sauce she'd accidentally eaten. "I don't know how you eat that."

Azula smiled. "I enjoy the sinus-clearing effect."

Somehow after their meal, they got to talking about the military and politics, particularly about the Hundred Year War. Katara didn't expect to be talking about the Fire Nation attack on the North Pole her first night back to Ember Island, but Azula had such interesting perspectives. It was nice to see her face twist in irritation as Katara explained the situation in the North Pole. Apparently Fire Nation soldiers had flubbed a few reports.

Now Azula pronounced, "Zhao was a fool."

Katara wondered if Azula was just bluffing; she was always so quick to point out other people's failures. Her next question was more of a challenge than anything. "What would you have done?"

"I certainly wouldn't have killed a spirit that's responsible for our tides. The Fire Nation relies upon its fishing, and who knows what would have happened to our navy." Azula pursed her full lips as she regarded her glass of cold fruit tea. It was so unfair for one person to be so unconsciously sexy. "I would have killed the Avatar and taken the chieftain's daughter as a hostage of the Fire Nation. I would have folded the Northern Water Tribe troupes into our own to use to take the Earth Kingdom."

"You're scary," Katara said with a sigh. She considered it and admitted, "That might have actually worked."

"I know," Azula replied. "I conquered Ba Sing Se, remember?"

"You're really proud of that, aren't you?"

"Shouldn't I be? The Fire Nation threw thousands of its soldiers at that city's walls for years, and a fourteen year old Princess with her two female servants conquered it in a few short days."

It was kind of impressive when Katara thought of it that way. She had a new appreciation for being able to go to a place that wasn't exactly welcoming to you. Azula brushed her ponytail from her shoulder and cocked her head. "Do you disagree?" she asked. Her golden eyes were intensely bright beneath her strong black eyebrows, and her hair was black and silky. Katara could only barely make out the curve of her breasts in her shirt, but she remembered them in detail.

Azula's graceful fingers caressed the rim of her glass, a slow gentle touch that switched fingers every stroke.

Katara remembered those fingers in other capacities.

Azula was wicked, wicked to her core, and Katara had missed that so much.

"I want to have sex with you again," Katara blurted.

Azula raised her eyebrows and blushed.

What was even more wonderful: Azula had no idea she was so sexy.

* * *

The second time Katara visited Ember Island, she arrived in the late morning. She walked out onto the beach with every intention of tossing Azula down onto the sand and kissing her crazy. But she just had to stop with what she saw.

Azula was balanced in a handstand. She bent her knees, lifted her head to look at the ground, and flexed her arms to complete push-ups from that position.

Katara shivered. It wasn't the strength required or the sweat that had soaked through Azula's silk clothes or the concentration on Azula's face. It was the gracefulness of her ability to do that; the exercise was as much about balance as strength. Azula exhaled with her upward push, her bare feet flexed and shifting to keep her balance. She inhaled as she flexed her arms, exhaled as she pushed up again.

After ten, Azula held herself, trembling in her position. Then instead of putting her feet back on the ground, she shifted her weight, and leaned her shoulders forward from her palms until her body was balanced parallel with the ground.

She held that pose, still trembling, but breathing evenly, for over a minute. One final exhalation, and Azula flexed her body and rolled it beneath her shoulders to sit with her legs straight and her arms by her side. She leaned over her legs, set her forehead on her shins, and folded her arms around her feet.

Katara was breathing hard. She was already wet.

Azula made a noise of shock when Katara crouched in front of her and seized her hand. If Katara kissed her now, they might not make it back to Azula's bed. And Katara needed the privacy of a closed door.

"You're early," Azula said as Katara dragged her back to the house. "And I would prefer not to be manhandled—"

She gasped when Katara yanked her into the bedroom, shut the door, and shoved Azula up on it. Katara covered her mouth and rubbed their bodies together. She seized the sweaty silk across Azula's back and yanked it frantically.

"I'm disgusting," Azula gasped. "I need to bathe."

"I want you just like this," Katara moaned. She licked the sweaty skin of Azula's neck and moaned at the taste. She wanted to strip Azula naked, shove her down on the bed, and bury her face in Azula's wet folds. She wanted to make Azula scream and soak her with her musk. It made her even crazier to know that she could do it. Azula would let her, and they'd both love it.

* * *

"Shouldn't Tonk be having kittens soon?"

Azula actually looked insulted. "Absolutely not."

"There must be male cats that wander around."

"Males cats that have been castrated. And even then, my cat certainly won't be running around, yowling to be bred every few weeks. Her ovaries were removed months ago." Azula petted Tonk in her particular way that was more of a deep head massage than pets. Tonk's eyes closed in pleasure.

In the South Pole, they did a similar thing with any female sled dogs chosen primarily for that purpose, versus breeding. Hakoda claimed they usually developed a uterine infection for some reason, versus the bitches used for breeding. Sled dog breeding was amazingly complicated, something that Katara usually left to her dad.

Azula apparently decided Katara's silence indicated it was time for a little history lesson. "This island had an enormous overpopulation of feral cats twenty or so years ago. The local government was going to euthanize most of the animals, but a few bleeding hearts volunteered to pay for the cats to be captured, altered, and rereleased. It's now illegal for any wandering cat to be intact."

"Don't all cats wander?"

"Exactly," Azula replied.

Katara realized she'd walked right into that one. She used to think the Fire Nation was all bluster without a single thought to the future, but the more she found out about them, the more she realized the people who led a war that ravaged the world weren't all bad. In fact, that little lesson was a hell of a lot like the Water Tribe.

* * *

"What are you doing?"

Azula shifted her head as Kota drew her hair up and began to scrub her back. "I'm bathing."

"But…" Katara watched helplessly as her very naked girlfriend was touched by another woman.

Azula glanced over her shoulder, baring a breast to Katara and to her servant. By default, Katara didn't really care about nudity. It was hard to be embarrassed about being naked when she grew up sharing a one-room hut with her grandmother and her older brother. This was a little much though. This wasn't just Azula being dressed by someone else (really, how hard was it to put on clothes?); this was Azula being touched and rubbed and…

Azula's eyes flicked across Katara's face. She twitched her hand, and Kota took herself away without a word.

"Do you care to join me?" Azula asked when Kota had shut the door behind her. Something about her tone suggested it was a defensive question.

Katara was similarly defensive. "Can't you start bathing yourself?"

One dark eyebrow rose dubiously. "How else would I wash my back?"

"It's not hard," Katara responded, mortified, irritated, and a tad amused at herself. "You use your arms like most other normal people in the world."

"Even Ty Lee isn't flexible enough to scrub her entire back." Azula's mouth pulled. "I hope you're not actually jealous of a _servant_."

"Why not? I'm a peasant," Katara shot back. That was probably a little unfair, but Azula's deep sigh and eye-roll after the fact didn't give Katara much perspective.

"You need to get over that," Azula said.

Katara narrowed her eyes. "What did you just say?"

"There's absolutely no reason to hold onto _one_ little statement I made in the middle of an admittedly rife situation. For dragon's sake, I called you a peasant after I nearly killed Zuko. Have a little perspective."

"I don't want to share you with anyone else!"

Azula's blinked and gave a little twitch to her head as if dislodging her last conversation strain. "Sharing what? Back washing duties? You aren't my servant, Katara."

"That's not all she does for you!"

"Yes, and the royal physician will start performing vaginal exams on me in a few years. Or should I forego that altogether? They're services, nothing more."

Katara opened her mouth to say: 'your body is mine'. She was so shocked by the thought that it didn't make it out of her mouth. Maybe Azula read that possession in her face because her irritation abruptly shifted to desire. She leaned back and opened her legs in blatant invitation. "Come here. I don't want you to wash my back."

That night, lying on her side on Azula's bed, Katara stared out of the filmy curtains at the bright moon that hung over the beach. Her mind chewed over a thought that wouldn't leave her alone: they couldn't resolve their conflicts with sex. Even if she did realize now how futile it was trying to convince Azula that allowing her servants to bathe her wasn't appropriate. Azula was right: it wasn't like Kota washed her privates or her breasts. Maybe Azula just didn't consider touch as important as Katara did.

Katara reached down and intertwined her fingers with the hand draped over her side. Azula shifted, smacked her lips, and began to breathe deeply again. If a woman washed Katara's back, she thought she would probably react to that touch, even sexually. She wouldn't feel desire, and she wouldn't have sex with that person. Katara certain didn't think Azula would either, but she just didn't like the thought of someone else bringing her any sort of physical pleasure.

This was a kind of possession she'd assumed she was immune to with Aang. And now here she was, jealous of Kota, who Azula didn't seem to notice existed unless she needed something. It was a dark _need_ that made her want to hold on so tightly, that scared her when she thought about leaving in a month. 'What if she finds someone else to do this with?' And, attached to that something even worse: 'what if this is the only thing I am to her?'

'Come home with me,' part of her wanted to say. The other part cringed at the thought of Azula in her village, sleeping in her hut, interacting with her people. Her dad would be _so_ impressed with Azula's snootiness. Azula would think they were all ignorant and backward. And then Katara would probably resent her for it, when a part of her looked at Azula and saw someone she was in love with.

The cold, hard truth was that Azula wasn't life-mate material. She hated children, was selfish, and she could make Katara feel so small sometimes, even if she probably didn't mean to. Katara felt like she knew Azula, yet the things Azula did for her: the care package, those awkward stilted letters, all clashed with the Azula that acted like she was better than everyone else. There hadn't been a tearful meeting or a demand that Katara never leave her again. Katara had hated Aang's desperate romantic declarations, but she wasn't sure how to judge the fact that Azula didn't act that way towards her.

Azula wasn't going to be a woman she could spend the rest of her life with, raising kids, and living with her family in the South Pole, but Katara loved her anyway. She just wasn't sure if Azula loved her back.

Azula stirred behind her and drew closer, breathing a warm exhalation against Katara's shoulder. "Why don't we go to the theater tomorrow?"

"What?"

"Theater," Azula mumbled, sighing deeply as she pulled their bodies flush and slipped a leg between Katara's thighs, sparking a shivery reaction. Azula started to breathe deeply again. Katara rolled her eyes and wiggled to give herself a little reprieve from the warm leg between hers since apparently Azula was asleep again. Just like her to randomly wake up, say something cognizant, and immediately fall back asleep. This was a good version. A bad version was Azula saying something about not wanting to disappoint 'Daddy'.

Maybe this was pity, Katara thought not for the first time. Maybe this all boiled down to wanting to erase all the problems she was just starting to realize existed in Azula's childhood. Maybe it wasn't love.

She was so afraid to commit. But as Azula nuzzled her neck, Katara realized it was way too late to worry about that.

* * *

Katara primped and readjusted her robes. She checked her hair one last time and reapplied lip-stain. She thought she looked good. She hoped Azula thought so. It felt kind of weird to be all nervous about a date when she'd technically started sleeping with Azula a year ago.

It was just that Azula had such specific tastes. Impressing Aang required letting her hair down and giving him a kiss. Azula was a whole different animal.

When Katara stepped into the courtyard of the Ember Island beach house, Azula looked her up and down and swallowed. She wore an adorable look of uncertainty that immediately put Katara at ease. (Azula was such a contrast of gentle and sharp.) She would have appreciated that look more, but in the long moment that Katara waited for the compliment to come, Azula remained silent.

Azula finally offered her arm. "Shall we?"

"It wouldn't kill you to compliment a girl sometimes," Katara said a little irritably. She wasn't vain, but it was nice to actually hear that Azula liked the way she looked. Especially when she was self-conscious about what exactly Azula liked about her in the first place.

To her shock, Azula blushed. "Compliments aren't my…greatest skill."

Damn, she couldn't be mad with Azula blushing like that. "What's there to be good at?"

Azula sighed and actually looked sheepish. They were both settled in the carriage before she answered. "I'll give you an example. I once complimented a boy's clothing."

"A little unorthodox, but I don't see the issue." Katara arranged her skirt.

"I said it was sharp."

_Sharp_? What? Katara raised an eyebrow and tried to meet Azula's eyes. "Well, that's…not horrible."

Azula pointedly kept her eyes turned out the carriage window as they rolled along the quiet jungle road. "I said it was sharp enough to puncture the hull of an empire-class Fire Nation battleship."

Katara opened her mouth but couldn't think of anything to say. She definitely didn't feel self-conscious anymore. Predictably, Azula had moved past her own embarrassment to enjoy Katara's shock. She grinned fiercely and finally met Katara's eyes as she continued, "Leaving thousands of men to drown at sea."

Katara held in her laughter and managed to say, "Please, say that all at once. Compliment my clothing."

"That's a sharp outfit, Katara. It's so sharp you could puncture the hull of an empire-class Fire Nation battleship, leaving thousands to drown at sea."

Katara couldn't breathe. She doubled over with her silent laughter and clutched at Azula's sleeve. She went to her knees in the carriage, then dropped against Azula's seat and cried with laughter.

"Well, you're more appreciative of my metaphor than he was. Though I get the feeling you aren't taking me seriously." Azula's voice was colored by amusement.

When Katara could breathe again, she reclaimed her seat. Katara carefully wiped her eyes and said, "I can't believe I used to be scared of you, you _dork_! Please, compliment me a lot."

Azula chose to compliment her during the play. At odd intervals, she leaned over to murmur:

"You're hot, Katara. Hotter than the melting point of liquid gold, a temperature that would scald the face off of unsuspecting Earth Kingdom soldiers."

"Ew." And yet Katara found herself laughing.

The next compliment was: "You make me hungry, hungrier than Ghan's dragon that once feasted on twenty men in one day."

"Dragons ate people?" she whispered back, horrified by the thought.

"Usually the scene was captured in a painting. I'll have to show you Ghan's painting in the Royal Palace."

"Thanks but no thanks."

Next: "Your fingers are graceful, Katara. As graceful as Princess Riza, who could decapitate men with one sword blow and still leave a thin strip of skin attaching the head to the throat."

Katara couldn't find the words to respond to that one.

The compliments were good…except when Azula drew a gory parallel, and those parallels became more and more elaborate and gruesome through the evening. After Azula somehow managed to compare her to evisceration, Katara wasn't sure she wanted to hear another one.

But then Azula leaned close and murmured, "I love you."

It was dizzying, hearing those words. Had that really just happened? They were in the theater, in public, watching a horrible play and…

Katara looked over in shock, but Azula was watching the play again, apparently unconcerned.

Every fear, every worry, every uncertainty was washed away. Azula loved her, and she cared enough to say it.

Azula had told her because it was the truth, not because she was fishing for a returned sentiment. It was incredibly unromantic…and romantic at the same time. Katara drew closer to lean her head on Azula's shoulder. She would return the sentiment—because she did love this goofball, awkward, silly, dorky girl—but she would wait until they were alone.

She could be romantic for the both of them. And now she could trust a little bit more.

* * *

Katara said, "Baby, look at me."

Azula didn't. She jerked against Katara's arms and her fingernails scored Katara's hips as she made a muffled noise that definitely meant she'd come. One foot tightened against Katara's calf, and Azula pulled her close everywhere, a heady sensation that went straight to Katara's ego. Katara enjoyed the spasms that clutched her fingers, and she continued her touches until Azula shook her head against her shoulder.

They settled on the pillows, regaining their breath and cooling down from their exertion. Katara expected Azula to reach for her after a moment, but Azula looked up at the ceiling and said, "I'm a baby now, am I?"

Oh, she'd said that, hadn't she? That was a little embarrassing. "It just slipped out."

"Mmhm," Azula replied dubiously. She glanced over at Katara, her face lit by gentle orange candle-light. Her hair was tousled, a little wavy after being up in a topknot all day, and it looked more brown than black. Katara loved it like this as much as when it was a curtain of straight black silk. Azula took another deep breath and looked at the ceiling. "Baby," she muttered.

"Well, you are. In bed, I mean." Maybe that wasn't the best way to put it, but Katara hadn't lost her need, and that didn't do much for her verbal filter.

Azula's lips pursed in an undeniably sexy expression. "Is this about hierarchy?"

Only Azula would have a complex about the fact that Katara liked to boss her around in bed sometimes. "I have no idea what 'this' is about. I called you 'baby' because I felt like it."

"It just 'slipped out'," Azula sneered. Maybe she was teasing, but sometimes it was hard to tell. Katara wasn't in the mood to figure it out tonight.

"Either you can deal with being called 'baby' or you can sleep alone."

Azula's mouth twisted, and she rolled over to hover over Katara. Her eyes were dark in this light, and she studied Katara soberly before lowering her head to kiss her. Those kisses escalated, and apparently that little crisis had been resolved. She expected Azula to be rough with her given the situation, but Azula's touch was especially gentle.

After Katara came back to Earth, Azula said, "Only in bed."

Katara's heart rate began to return to normal as she realized what Azula had said. "What?"

"I don't want to hear that term anywhere that someone else may hear it."

"What if we have sex in the bath?"

Azula groaned and rolled away. Katara didn't care. She pulled Azula against her and snuggled close, sleepy but resigned to the fact that Azula couldn't stand to sleep naked. (Not that Katara could blame her; the one time they'd done it, they'd woken up practically stuck to each other.) After a moment, Azula got up and tossed a silk robe her way. Katara pulled it on for fear of one of the house staff walking in to see her naked. Azula stepped into silk pants and belted her robe before she got back in bed.

"It just slipped out," Azula muttered. When she settled on her pillow, she reached out and curled her finger against Katara's.

Katara knew she was forgiven.


	13. Endearment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first time Azula uses an endearment with Katara. Between Books 1 and 2.

The book in Katara's hand made her blush, especially the illustrations. Only the Fire Nation would have a manual for lesbian sex. Katara turned the book sideways to try to make out what that position was, but she had trouble seeing all the limbs involved, especially since there were three women in the picture. She looked up at Azula, who was probably reading about some old historical chronicle.

"This crazy manual just gets raunchier every page."

"It's not quite what I would consider literary climax, darling."

Azula didn't look up from her book as she spoke, but Katara had the benefit of looking right at Azula through her words. She watched Azula's face shift from indulgence to horror as she realized what she'd just said. Not only that, her cheeks flushed pink.

Katara closed the book and set it on the table next to her seat. There wasn't much that was funnier than this situation, and Katara couldn't hold in her laughter as she asked, "What did you just call me?"

"Nothing," Azula lied, her eyes firmly on her book now. Her face kept getting redder; she'd never blushed like this before.

"You called me darling," Katara wheedled. She'd wondered if Azula would ever use an endearment with her, and this was just perfect. All of her friends would have fainted if they'd heard Azula call her something so sweet. Azula's mouth twisted in a pout, and she remained silent. Katara got up, pulled Azula's book away, and leaned in her lap, trying to force Azula to meet her eyes. "It just slipped out, didn't it?"

Azula had, of course, made fun of Katara for the first endearment she'd used. She'd made fun of Katara's justification too: 'it just slipped out'. Azula, the hardhead, retorted, "At least I didn't use it in the throes of climax."

"You like it; don't even pretend you don't." Katara started to giggle, far enough removed from her own embarrassment to tease Azula mercilessly about this. "You love it, baby. That's why you just called me darling, which is so sweet, sweetheart."

"Don't call me that." Azula's glare could have frozen over the sun. It was a good bluff.

"'Baby' isn't so bad; is it, darling?"

"You're not amusing me."

"Oh, sweetie, please, I'm just trying to show my undying love."

Azula took a big breath and set her face in her hand. Katara sensed Azula was actually reaching the end of her temper and kissed her lightly before she went down to the beach to run through the new waterbending drills Pakku had given her. Katara kept thinking she'd reached the end of his lessons and he'd throw in another form or another technique. He must have died inside when he lied and told her she'd learned everything she could during the war.

By the time dinner rolled around, Azula was back in a better mood, and by the time they went to bed, Azula was amorous. When Azula reached for her, Katara grabbed her wrist. "Nope. Baby, you have to call me something sweet."

Azula actually huffed. She withdrew her hand and rolled so that her back faced Katara. They'd been together for a few years, and Katara knew a ruse when she saw one. She tried to hold in her laughter and didn't quite manage as she pressed kisses to Azula's neck. "Come on, baby. Just one word."

"One word for a fuck," Azula said snootily.

Katara rolled her eyes. "One word and we make love all night long."

"You exaggerate. I'm looking for half an hour of activity before an uninterrupted night's sleep." Azula's jaw clenched. "I could seduce you if I wanted to."

Probably true. Katara could seduce her too though. She brushed her nose against Azula's ear. Her mind more on sexual teasing than bantering, and her voice reflected that. "You could try, baby."

"This isn't a mood-setter."

Katara sent her hands lower. Azula took a heavy breath in response to the touch. She swallowed.

"Don't make me wait long, baby," Katara murmured in her ear.

Azula took a breath, opened her mouth, closed it, and started again. This was a full-on pout. "You're really going to make me say it."

Katara hummed in agreement, gently easing open the front of Azula's sleeping robe. She massaged Azula's thigh and kissed her shoulder softly, more than aware that this was having the desired effect. This made her feel as powerful as winning a bending duel and so very sexy. Azula shifted restlessly, tangled her fingers in Katara's, and finally murmured, "Darling."

She was absolutely adorable, and Katara had to reward that, didn't she?

Of course Azula had her revenge. For the next week, she called Katara 'darling' at every turn until Katara was ready to be done with endearments forever. Katara got her revenge for that: she told Zuko. It was no wonder that the names stuck after they made fun of each other so much about them.


	14. Genetics

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Azula enjoys a scholarly chat with Katara's grandmother post-MES.

"How are you, Kanna?"

Kanna sighed. "Enjoying my stay, but starting to miss home."

She didn't have much longer to stay. Katara and Ana would be going back with her in a few short weeks. Azula was working at a breakneck pace to be sure she joined them only a few weeks later.

Azula poured herself a cup of tea and glanced over the railing to take in Rakka asleep in the strong sunlight of late morning in Ursa's garden. Ursa walked out of her apartment and folded her arms as she turned her head and tried to figure out a way around the dragon. When she turned to retreat back into her apartment, she looked up at the balcony and shot Azula a glare…as if Azula had anything to do with Rakka's sleeping habits.

Tonk leapt from a tree branch onto the balcony. She'd finally learned in the last few weeks that Rakka wasn't much of a threat, though Tonk's hunting had declined. A dragon apparently didn't increase the resident bird population of the palace.

The bearded cat trilled and jumped into Kanna's lap. She'd taken to sleeping on Kanna's bed too, the traitor. Kanna smiled and scratched Tonk's nape, immediately coaxing strong purrs. "What color is she?" Kanna asked.

It wasn't a silly question. Tonk was dappled black and orange in a dilute pattern that wasn't often found in bearded cats.

"Tortoise-shell," Azula replied. "I haven't a clue why breeders call that pattern such. If she were a dog, she would be considered a brindle."

"Is this a common color?"

"By and large that dual coloration is only found on female cats. Male cats tend to only be black or orange, but some females can carry both colors."

"I wonder why," Kanna said.

"Perhaps whatever trait that makes a cat female also coincides with carrying two colors. There are several theories."

Kanna sipped her tea and looked at Azula with surprising interest. "What are the theories?"

Azula was startled to be asked that. At this point in the conversation, Katara usually gave her a long-suffering sigh and tuned her out. "Are you truly interested or are you pretending to be polite?"

"I wouldn't have asked if I didn't want to know."

Fair enough. "Some biologists believe that there is a specific pattern to sex traits. They believe that all creatures carry two sex traits. The first is shared among all animals whether male or female. The second determines what gender the animal will be. One rather outrageous geneticist at the university in Ba Sing Se actually used bearded cats as his model. He suggests that because female cats can carry two colors, their two sex traits must be the same. He suggests that male bearded cats carry a different sex trait that makes them male, and that the trait cannot carry a color."

Kanna cocked her head. "Is there any way to prove this?"

"Not at this point. It has been a matter of interest for many years, though not necessarily about bearded cats. About a century ago, a man in Gaoling bred foxes for hunting. He bred the gentler foxes together and produced a line that was docile and easily domesticated to sell as pets. He noticed that that line, unlike any other fox he'd ever bred or seen, displayed piebaldism and curly tails…also the tendency to bark."

"What is piebaldism?" Kanna asked.

"It's a characteristic pattern of white along the muzzle and chest."

"Ah, like our dogs at the South Pole."

"Yes," Azula replied.

"So this man thought that the white fur was related to being docile?"

Azula smiled. She enjoyed that this woman was actually listening to her. "That's the thought. There's no way to prove it though."

Kanna rubbed the cat in her lap for a moment. "What about bending?"

"Bending? As a hereditary trait?"

"Yes," Kanna said.

This was not an off-the-cuff question. Azula sipped her tea as she considered how to answer. "I imagine we'll be seeing more people of different nations bending other elements in this peacetime."

"And your children?"

Azula met Kanna's eyes. "I will love my children whether they firebend, waterbend, or don't bend at all."

Kanna gave her a long look. "I know. But you must make sure they know that too."

"Yes," she said quietly. She realized her hand was on her abdomen. "They will know."


	15. South Pole gossip

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Katara's friends at the South Pole like to gossip as much as Gran Gran's group. Between Books 1 and 2.

"So…"

Katara knew that particular tone of voice always preceded an inappropriate question or comment by Mina. She and Lia were always gigging about something sexual. According to Gran Gran, this would only get worse as they got older. It was pretty disturbing to imagine the elder women of the tribe talking about sex. Katara tried not to think about it—or about the fact that Gran Gran and Pakku probably—she stopped thinking about it. Katara carefully slipped another colored bead onto the leather braid she was making to give as a gift for the newest arrival of their village, a little girl she'd helped deliver the day before.

"What's it like to have sex with a firebender?"

The bead shot off of the end of Katara's needle and skittered across the pelt on the floor and under the tent flap. Katara's head jerked up and she looked at Mina in shock. Mina and Lia were staring at her with unnerving attention.

Her immediate, gut reaction was: "T-that's none of your business!"

They started to grin. Mina glanced at Lia. "Look at her face getting all red."

"Well, why not? Apparently her new lover is one hundred times better in bed than the Avatar."

Katara wanted to die. She hoped at some point she didn't feel like sinking through the earth was a better option than hearing about what she'd said in front of her family and friends. She felt sorry for Aang now that they'd both apologized to each other. He had to be as mortified as she was.

"Well, she _is_ a princess," Mina responded. It sounded like they'd rehearsed this conversation.

"And a firebender. My cousin from the North Pole says she slept with a firebender once. She said he was hot, physically—his skin and his…" Lia waggled her eyebrows. "And he took what he wanted—but he made sure she was pleasured the whole time. Three times in a night, and then twice in the morning. He used his mouth too."

"Please stop," Katara moaned.

"We'll stop. If you give us some information."

The two other girls were around Katara's age. They'd grown up together. Katara really did want to tell someone about her new surprising relationship with Azula, and this was better than the unhappy distrust Hakoda had been carrying around. She wanted her friends to at least know that Azula was a good person. And she was relieved and almost prideful to finally be able to talk about the pleasure of sex, instead of the awkwardness she'd held so close to her chest out of respect for Aang and fear that she was incapable of being a good sexual partner.

"She was shy," Katara said quietly. Mina and Lia leaned closer to listen to her. "But then, when we were together, she did things to me that… I didn't even know about."

"What things?" they asked with utter curiosity.

Katara blushed. "Her mouth," she mumbled, still shivering to remember Azula's beautiful lips between her legs. "The way she touched me and kissed me…I just never knew it could be like that. I'd completely lose myself. Sometimes she made me…come more than once. And she was so… She let me touch her any way I wanted. She made me feel so beautiful and strong, like I could make her feel so good."

Li and Mina raised their eyebrows and shot each other knowing looks.

"How many lovers has she had?" Lia asked.

That immediately got Katara's hackles up. "She hasn't! Azula said…that she read about it."

That apparently did not satisfy the juicy information they wanted. Mina actually looked at little disappointed. Lia, however, was surprised. "There are books about sex?"

"Apparently." Azula had promised to have one delivered to Ember Island so they could try a few things out. Katara was both mortified that Azula would actually ask someone to bring her a book about sex and anticipating exploring all these wonderful new things with Azula. It was like a whole new world had opened to her. Katara had already started planning her next trip.

"How does sex with a woman work anyway?"

"One hundred times better than sex with the Avatar," Mina said with a saucy laugh.

Katara put her face in her hands and groaned.


	16. Katara questions Azula about Omashu

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> See chapter title. Post-MES.

Katara rubbed soothing circles on Azula's skin; each gentle touch reaffirmed that their baby was growing normally. "There's something I've wondered about for a long time."

"What's that?" Azula asked.

Sometimes she asked these questions, but this one had been nagging at her for a while. "At Omashu, you wouldn't trade Tom-Tom for Bumi. Why?"

Azula laughed quietly. "Do you want me to tell you I did it out of the goodness of my heart?"

"I just want to know why."

Azula met Katara's eyes with a smirk. "Let's review what I saw during that exchange: a boy and girl who were clearly from the Water Tribe which is notorious for its belief in the sanctity of family, and a child pretending to be an airbender—presumably by the tattoos—from a culture that believes in pacifism. First: would your motley group really be able to murder a baby? Second: would you really be able to take care of that baby while traveling to do whatever it was you were doing?"

Katara's lips twitched as she realized how transparent they'd been.

Azula continued airily, "And lo and behold, despite not trading Bumi for Tom-Tom, the child was returned to his parents not a day after the exchange was canceled, completely unharmed."

"What if you were wrong?" This was what Katara really wanted to know.

"I wasn't wrong," Azula said.

"What if you were?"

Azula's lips pinched, and Katara sensed she wouldn't like this answer as much. She didn't turn her sharp golden gaze away from Katara's eyes when she answered. She was devastatingly beautiful. "Do you want me to say I would have mourned Mai's little brother? I wouldn't have. It wasn't a fair trade, and the boy would have died protecting the Fire Nation."

And there was that alien part of Azula that was all Fire Nation. Never could Katara justify sacrificing a baby, a child, for any cause. Katara met her eyes and asked, "Could you make that choice now?"

Azula opened her mouth and closed it, and her expression shifted in shock. Against Katara's hand, the baby in her womb shifted. "Your attempts at humanizing me—"

Katara kissed her. She'd seen the truth of that answer in Azula's eyes: maybe she would, but she would hesitate. That was enough. "Okay." She kissed Azula again and admitted, "You _were_ right."

Azula relaxed in her arms. "I usually am."

"You know, ten years ago you would have said you're always right."

"It would be rather boring to be always right. Sometimes I like to try being wrong."

Katara poked her shoulder with a laugh. "You are so arrogant."

"It's not arrogance if I'm right." But as she said it, Azula's lips twitched, and she abruptly laughed.


	17. Korra meets Azula for the first time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A what-if scenario: How would Avatar Korra first meet Fire Lord Azula? (Notably, the extended family Korra mentions are from her mother's side.)

Korra is six when she meets Katara for the first time. She's old, maybe even older than Korra's granny, but she's a lot nicer than Granny. She gives a lot of hugs, and those are hard to get in the compound. Korra is bitterly disappointed when Katara begins to teach her waterbending; all of her instructors leave her as soon as she starts to like them.

Katara doesn't though. She keeps smiling and hugging, even if Korra has a bad lesson or talks back. Sometimes Katara leaves and doesn't come back for months, and those months feel like years. But she does come back. She promises several times she won't miss Korra's birthday. On that day, Korra is afraid that she won't be allowed to leave the compound to see her family, but they do let her go. Her father carries her on his shoulders as they go out on the shorefast ice to watch the baby seals.

He talks about their breeding, why they are hunted, what the consequences of their overhunting now are on the tribe. He speaks of penguins, how their blubber is used for oil worldwide now, and why they no longer allow humans to sled on their backs. "We must treat our prey carefully because they are our sustenance. They were put here for us to use but mostly to protect."

Senna has a happier lesson. They braid leather strips with beads, and she explains the colors and patterns. She teaches Korra two different knots too. Korra's braid is crooked, but Senna tells her she will treasure it always.

They share raw seal and sweet berries. The berries swiped inside the seal's open belly are delicious. Senna even prepares a batch of blood cakes for Korra. They're spongy, brassy, fatty, and wonderful. The White Lotus don't approve of uncooked food. A few of them don't even eat meat, which Korra still doesn't understand. They certainly don't eat blood and fat cooked in blood cakes.

She begged them to allow her one night at home with her parents, but her requests are denied. Instead, Korra's parents take her hands and they walk the long walk back to the compound. They aren't allowed inside, something that makes her dad's wide jaw jump, but they offer no protests as they kiss Korra and tell her they _will_ see her in a week. It feels like one of those times when they're talking to someone else instead of her.

Katara is waiting for her inside. Korra is bubbling to tell her how wonderful her day was and how wonderful her gifts are. Tonraq pulled out his key fiddle and played for hours, and Senna sang and danced with Korra around their hut. She has a new fishing hook waiting for her in their hut, and they both promised to take a full day to go out and ice fish next month. Katara listens with a smile and places a strong hand on her shoulder. "The day isn't over yet," she says.

The two of them eat dinner with the White Lotus's new firebending instructor. Korra doesn't like the man because he doesn't like her. He orders a spicy rice dish that burns Korra's mouth. It doesn't matter though; she's full of seal and blood cakes, and she knows he'll be gone in a few months.

"I don't like him," Korra tells Katara when he leaves for his private house in the compound.

"I don't either," Katara replies very seriously. "But you must respect him."

Jhao, the White Lotus leader, talks constantly about respect. For some reason he thinks Korra has none. Why should she care about her instructors when she knows they will leave?

Sometime in the night, Katara awakens her. She hands Korra her clothes, and they slip outside into the deep night. Korra is stunned when the White Lotus on guard, a smiling man who winks at her and gives her Fire Nation soft candies every time he sees her, says not a word when they walk out of the compound.

This is not allowed. This is breaking the number one rule: never ever leave the compound without permission.

Tonraq waits for them there. He's brought Uncle's sled and dog team, and the dogs grin at Korra as she and Katara sit in the basket of the sled. Tonraq snaps his whip and they begin a journey that Korra feels is otherworldly. The snow is pure white in the bright moonlight, and the sled moves so quickly over it. She has been on a dog sled only once, and riding at night is so much more interesting.

They ride past Korra's parents' town, but she sees her mother and even Granny waving as they pass. Katara holds Korra's waist so she can stand up and wave back. Eventually they reach a small town sitting on the edge of the ice. Korra has never been here. She's not sure where it is. The White Lotus have no maps of the South Pole even though they have so many of the other countries and continents. (Korra can't remember which one is which right now.)

Tonraq helps Katara out of the sled, and then he bends to pull Korra into a big hug. She loves his hugs. He kisses her—his face is rough against her own—and smiles when he withdraws. "Have fun," he says seriously. "I'll be here when you get back, my little pup."

"Where am I going?" Korra asks.

"I'll tell you when we're on our way," Katara replies. She seems uneasy for the moment, and Korra takes her hand. They walk out onto the ice-dock and are welcomed aboard a small metal ship. How do metal ships go anywhere without a sail?

The captain, an important looking woman, bows to Korra. Korra understands this greeting; she has to bow to all her instructors, but sometimes she gets the different bows mixed up. Usually they don't mind, but sometimes they do. The ones that mind usually don't stay long. Now Korra bows back. Tonraq waves to them from the dock before Korra even realizes the ship is moving. She and Katara stand and watch the shore slowly slip out of view. Korra yawns, but she's too excited to feel sleepy. She's never been anywhere before. She's never been on a ship before. Once her uncle took her out on an umak, but this is different.

"Where are we going?" she asks again.

Katara leads her across the deck and into the ship. They step into a room with a low table and bed. In the warmth of the room, they both remove their parkas. Katara fixes tea, and Korra drinks it. It's a kind that they keep on the compound, but it tastes better on an adventure.

"We're going to the Fire Nation," Katara finally tells her. "You will meet the Fire Lords, which is your duty as the Avatar."

Korra's eyes round. Her whole life she's heard about Fire Lord Azula and Fire Lord Zuko. She's learned about them during the war and after. She feels a bolt of excitement when she realizes what else she may see. "Will I meet Rakka and Tikkin?!"

Rakka, the first dragon, and Tikkin, her first daughter. Ridden by Azula and Zuko. Rakka is blue and white, and Tikkin is red.

For some reason, Katara begins to laugh. She nods. "I think that is quite likely."

"When will we get there?!" Korra is shaking with her excitement.

"In two days if the weather permits."

Two days will be eternity.

But they aren't. Katara lets her sleep as long as she wants the next day, which isn't very long. But then they explore the ship, meet all of the crew, and practice new waterbending forms. Katara teaches her something that she promises will be the basis of healing, and that excites Korra immensely. The White Lotus don't think waterbending is important because Korra's basic element is water, but she wants to learn about healing.

It is a busy day, and she falls asleep easily that night.

The next morning, Korra awakens to a new world. It's hot, even in the strange soft silk that Katara dresses her in. The sun is bright and hot as well, and there are so many different colors everywhere. When Korra looks from the deck of the ship to the city they dock against, she sees buildings all shining in the morning sun. The city climbs up a mountainside that Katara explains is the rim of a long-dead volcano.

This is Capital City.

A woman in silk and a man in earthbender green greet them. They bow low to Katara and then bow low to Korra. She returns their bows and doesn't know what to say when they ask her how the trip was. They smile as she stutters out an answer and goes silent.

They take a carriage, one drawn by a real ostrich horse. Katara only smiles and lets Korra hesitantly run a hand over the animal's snout. It's a lot more interesting than the few self-propelled carriages that toot horns and ride by their open carriage, or the bicycles that weave through the traffic.

Korra has never seen so many people.

There are all sorts of people: brown skin, light skin, black hair, brown hair, big, tall, fat, and skinny. The buildings are strange too: boxy with pointy edges and all made out of wood.

Korra thinks she has seen it all until they finally reach the top of the edge of the volcano. Now she is looking down into it, and it is full of buildings and people, more than she has ever even imagined could exist. It seems like the whole world is in this city. She stands up to stare at the giant building in the center: the palace. This is where one of the last battles of the war was fought.

That makes Korra stop. Katara fought in that battle. She has never connected the Katara in her history books with this Katara who is her teacher. Now Korra makes the connection and is even more overwhelmed.

"Oh, dear." Katara hugs her close and wipes her tears away. "It's all so exciting isn't it?"

It is, especially when she sees a dark dragon circle close to their carriage. The sun makes him look the dark blue color of her father's parka.

"That's Bogo," Katara says with a smile. "My wife thinks we should rename him, but Bogo isn't a bad name, is it?"

Korra likes the name. Bogo is a mischievous spirit that comes out to play during the dark winter months.

"He's a silly young boy. We think he'll choose my granddaughter, Ilah."

That's too confusing for Korra to understand. She's too busy watching the dragon to ask for clarification. He remains in sight as their carriage continues on into the great city. "Can I play with her?" Korra asks, desperate already at the thought of a child she can play with.

"I think so," Katara says with a gentle smile.

Korra feels like she will explode as the palace gates open slowly, but she is still awed by the two statues that stand on either side of the gates. One is a woman; one a man. They must be Azula and Zuko. The dragon, Bogo, flies overhead. He is waiting for them when their carriage rolls into the palace.

It's green here. There are trees and fountains and flowers and more vegetation than Korra has a name for. Bogo is a splash of blackish blue in that green. Korra wants to touch him so much. Katara takes her hand firmly as they step out of the carriage. They approach Bogo, who remains still as Korra puts her hand on his face. He's furry, and his eyes have a strange lid that folds up when Katara runs her knuckles over his brow.

Korra has never been happier than that moment, with the dragon's spicy breath flowing around her. He's beautiful. Katara touches her shoulder gently, and Korra turns around. There is a line of people, adults, who all bow to her. Korra doesn't know what to do, but Katara takes her hand and leads her gently through them to the great palace.

The palace is huge and pretty and dark. It's lit by fire, not electricity. The walls are tall, the halls are wide, and there are more pretty tapestries and decorations than Korra has ever seen. It feels rich and old.

None of that is anything when Katara turns them to face a tapestry. The man on it is huge and old and bald. There's fire all around him. His hand carries a curved sword.

"This is the first Fire Lord from the current family," Katara tells her. "He is Fire Lord Zuko and Fire Lord Azula's greaty-great grandfather."

Korra remembers that greaty-great means lots of greats were thrown in there. He lived a long time ago. "What's his name?"

"I don't know," Katara replies. For some reason, she smiles. "You should ask Fire Lord Azula. She can tell you the names and histories of all of these men and women."

They walk slowly along the line of tapestries. Korra stares at them. The first one that she recognizes is Sozin, and that's because of the comet that sweeps over his head. Next to him is a severe man with gray hair. Next to him is another man Korra can name: Ozai. Avatar Aang defeated Ozai. That sort of means she did, and she's afraid of the massive man standing on that wall. And then his son, Zuko, who has a scar even on his tapestry. But it's the next tapestry that makes Korra stop.

The woman on that tapestry is surrounded by blue. There's even blue under her feet. It's water! Water, like Korra's people. There's a big blue dragon wrapped around the woman. Rakka and Azula.

There is another tapestry beside Azula's. She wonders who that person is, but her eyes are stuck on Azula and Zuko.

Korra is going to meet them.

Katara takes her hand, and they continue through the palace. They stop in front of a set of closed doors guarded by two men in masks and red uniforms. The men salute and open the doors. There Katara releases Korra's hand. "Go," she says quietly. "Bow and introduce yourself."

Korra takes a hesitant few steps forward, and the doors close behind her. She hesitates before she walks down the room. It's a huge room with big round columns. At the end of the room is a raised platform that is outlined by fire: orange and blue.

Sitting on their shins on that stage are two people who are larger than life.

They're really old, which surprises Korra. They both wear big crests in their hair that look like the upper edge of a pineapple, a fruit one of Korra's earthbending instructors used to share with her before he was sent away. These two old people look alike, but one has a scar and the other doesn't.

Korra jumps when she sees two dragons coiled on that massive stage. Like the fire, they are orange and blue.

She feels their eyes on her and trembles as she bows. She bumbles with her hands and puts them flat against each other instead of a fist below a fist or a fist in a palm. "I'm pleased to meet you." Her voice sounds shrill and overly loud. "I'm Korra." Then she remembers who she is and adds, "The Avatar."

"Avatar Korra." The man with the scar, Zuko, speaks. His voice is surprisingly soft and smooth.

"It is an honor to receive you, Avatar Korra," says the woman, Azula. Her voice is hoarse but steady. Korra trembles as they stand up in unison. Zuko is a little bit taller than Azula, but they're both huge in her eyes, even when they step off of their shared fire stage and stand level with Korra.

They do something strange: they bow to her.

"What request does the Avatar have for us?" Zuko asks.

Korra trembles, looks back and forth between them, and she blurts, "Can I pet your dragons?!"

* * *

Katara sighed as Azula laughed. "She's only a little girl."

"Yes," Azula agreed, wiping her eyes. "She was overwhelmed at that time. She was fairly perplexed as to why an old Fire Lord was wearing a Water Tribe betrothal necklace. And…" Azula started laughing again. "She asked us, 'Why are you so _old_?'"

"How could she guess?" Katara asked bitterly. "The poor thing has no interaction with anyone but her parents once every few days and her instructors. She's already learned not to latch onto them because they're sent away after a year. I don't know what Tenzin is thinking!"

"White Lotus have already arrived at the docks." Azula sipped her tea with her lips pinched. "How can this girl be a normal person, much less the Avatar, if she's kept in a prison?"

It made Katara angry to even think of. This wasn't the first conversation they'd had about the issue, and at this point they only exacerbated each other's anger when they talked about it. Katara pulled Azula's hand into her lap and traced the veins and tendons on the back of it. It was an aged hand, but it was strong, just like Azula.

"She was so excited when she saw the grands," Azula said with a faint smile. "Has she ever played with children her own age?"

"Rarely. There are a few children in her village, but they're either too old or too young for her to really play with. And her parents rightfully want to monopolize what time they do have with her."

"I'm going to take her for a ride on Rakka."

"She could die of excitement." Katara threaded their fingers together. "Be careful, you old woman."

"I'm old, not stupid. We'll be in safety harnesses."

* * *

The days fly by. Korra is so exhausted at the end of the day, she sleeps hard in the soft bed in Fire Lord Azula and Katara's apartment. Even the thought of the two other children who share the apartment with them can't keep her awake. She plays all day with those kids. They explore the palace, find all sorts of secret passages, play tag, share firebending lessons, travel out of the palace grounds to eat at restaurants and visit other families, and do so many wonderful things that Korra thinks this is paradise.

She cries when she realizes it's her last day. It makes her feel a little better when Ilah, who is the girl closest to her age, promises to write to Korra. She's never written a letter before. It won't be the same as laughing and talking and playing with her, but Ilah says letter writing can be fun. Ilah says that Korra is her friend. Korra cries; it's the first time she's ever had a friend.

On her last day, Korra sees Azula firebend for the first time. She realizes why Azula's tapestry is so blue. She also realizes that she made a mistake when the Fire Lords told her she could make a request. She should have asked Fire Lord Azula if she will teach Korra firebending.

Korra wants to live here, play every day with the kids in the palace, and learn how to bend blue fire. Instead, she asked to pet their dragons.

The night before she and Katara will take a boat back to the South Pole, Korra cannot sleep. She creeps out of her dark room to find Fire Lord Azula and Katara sitting on the balcony, talking softly to each other. They're holding hands.

Azula notices her first. She sort of scares Korra, with her even expressions and rough voice, but Azula smiles at her now. "What is it, Korra?"

She wants to ask to live here, to be a part of this family, to have a dragon, to take Ilah back with her to the South Pole. But she's the Avatar, and Jhao has told her time and time again that she has a responsibility to the world. Korra bows deeply. "Will you please please please teach me firebending?"

Azula's smile has deepened when Korra lifts her head. Azula says, "It would be an honor to teach you, Korra."

It means a lot that Azula uses her name instead of her title then. Korra sniffles and bows. Returning to the South Pole isn't quite as bleak a thought.


	18. In which Katara becomes a midwife

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> See chapter title; between Books 1 and 2

Katara rarely had contact with citizens of the Fire Nation aside from the royal family. On the few occasions that she could cajole Azula to go out and do something in public, they didn't really talk to anyone. It was just a bunch of ass-kissing that got old quickly. She was pretty surprised when the royal physician, a man she talked to all of twice, asked her if she commonly attended to women during childbirth.

She'd never particularly considered herself a midwife, not given all the other duties she had at home, but she realized her experience was probably as much as anyone could want. "I have a lot of experience, at least at the South Pole."

Ling regarded her with a steady gaze. "A friend of mine on Ember Island is looking for a waterbending midwife to aid him in an upcoming birth that's likely to be difficult. Unfortunately, there's a shortage of waterbending healers that have experience with birthing in the Fire Nation."

It wasn't exactly what Katara wanted to be doing on her vacation with Azula, but… "Sure. I'd be happy to help."

After a day of visiting with Zuko, a night sleeping in Azula's ever-empty bed in the palace, Katara was off to Ember Island full of anticipation of seeing Azula again. Not just anticipation; it was need too. Katara missed Azula so much. She almost forgot in the whirl that was the first few days of pretty much staying in bed with Azula.

She and Azula were playing around in the ocean a few mornings later. Azula pretended to be stern about not doing her normal circuit swim. "We've both had more exercise than we can deal with," Katara asserted.

"True," Azula replied, floating lazily until she had to duck under a breaker.

Katara pulled her close when she resurfaced, and they kissed through the taste of the brine of seawater. "Breakfast?" she asked, aware by now that Azula had specific times for specific things, and one of those things was eating.

Azula nodded, and they walked back up to the house, sandy and salty.

A strange man accompanied Azula's majordomo in the study. He bowed low as they walked into the house. By the flush of his face, he was embarrassed to see them so casual. "Who are you?" Azula asked him flatly, ignoring her staff.

"Princess, it's a great honor. I'm Doctor Tam. I came to speak with Lady Katara."

Azula glanced at Katara briefly before walking out of the room without a word. Katara wasn't sure what that look was about. She glanced at Tam. "Are you Ling's friend?"

"I'm a former apprentice," Tam said.

"Do you have time to wait for me to get dressed? We're going to have breakfast after that."

He lowered his head. "Certainly, Lady Katara."

"Call me Katara, please."

Kota had already scrubbed Azula's back when Katara joined them in the bathing chambers. She hesitated, like always, until Kota left the bathing chamber quietly. It still pissed Katara off a little bit that Kota regularly touched Azula like that.

"Who's your friend?" Azula asked. Contrary to what Katara was afraid of, she didn't seem upset. Katara ignored the sarcastic note of Azula's term 'friend'.

"Ling asked me if I'd help him—Tam—with a difficult birth while I'm here."

"You're going to?"

"If I can help, then sure. I'd hate to refuse and then something go wrong."

Azula gave her a steady, judging glance before she obliged Katara's request to dump a bucket of water over her head to rinse her. "I asked him to stay for breakfast with us."

Azula sighed. "Lovely," she said in a tone that indicated the opposite.

The whole situation made Katara ask a question she already knew the answer to. "Do you want kids?"

"Few things terrifying me," Azula responded as she climbed in the bath. "One of those things is carrying a parasite in my womb for the better part of a year. The other is forcing that parasite from an area of my body I'm rather fond of."

"It shrinks back," Katara said with a laugh. "I don't think most women go through pregnancy and childbirth for their own sakes. They do it for the baby."

"That makes even less sense. All that pain for a little creature that screams until it takes nutrients from a woman's breast and then repays all that care by spewing bodily fluids from all orifices."

Katara burst into laughter at that description, even if part of her was disappointed. She wasn't surprised, but she had hoped a little that Azula would feel differently. Maybe she would change her mind if she actually interacted with a baby. There was nothing quite like holding a newborn child in her arms and listening for its gusty cry. Or watching the baby nurse for the first time and the look of gentle love on the new mother's face.

For all's sakes, Azula loved a bearded cat. How could she not love a human baby?

* * *

Katara went out with Tam once they finished their stilted breakfast. She still smarted from how Azula ignored everyone during breakfast and read silently at the table. Tam hesitantly made conversation with Katara until they picked up on their mutual experiences of medicine and birthing.

Katara pointedly didn't ask Azula's input when she agreed to accompany Tam to their prospective client. It was a big house—grander than Azula's but inland on a less desirable piece of property. Katara glanced around at the interior, hoping she hid her distaste of the gaudy decorations. She wondered if those decorations signified a less than polite view of the color of her eyes.

The servant that showed them into the house was polite, however. After a moment, he ushered them back through the house to an airy porch. There a light breeze carried across the slim wooden furniture, and the lady of the house sat waiting for them there quietly. She was a pale woman, and her smile seemed weak.

"Lady Han." Tam bowed low. Katara copied him only in her bow, but she simply lowered her head and shoulders in polite recline.

"This is Lady Katara, a renowned waterbender who has some experience assisting with childbirth."

"You're a waterbender healer?"

The 'renowned' part made her a little uncomfortable. "Yes. Tam mentioned to me that you're interested in my skills."

Han nodded. "I am. What is your fee?"

Katara was startled. She hadn't even considered being paid. "You don't—"

"Three hundred gold pieces is her standard fee," Tam said quickly.

The lady nodded. "Of course. It will be delivered to you by the end of the week." She took a sip of tea and sighed. "I carried a child to term before, but the childbirth… My husband chose my life over our son's." Her face shifted in brittle emotion. "We never planned to try again, but not all things are planned in life. I want everything possible to be done to bring this little one into this world safely."

Katara forgot about her anger over Tam's audacity and slipped to her knees beside Lady Han. She reached out and placed her hand over the woman's abdomen. The baby was strong—likely a boy, though she was still working on her pre-birth gender identification. She focused her sense and slowly worked through the lady's chi and her body.

Afterwards, the three of them discussed the best regimen for Lady Han's remaining days of pregnancy. They would check in once weekly unless a problem came up, and Katara would likely still be on the island when Lady Han went into labor.

It was only when they were in the carriage on the way back that Katara expressed her irritation with Tam's asking fee.

He was surprised. "You should value your services, Lady Katara. If these women think they can hire you without a fee, they may consider your services that of a servant. I was led to believe you're a professional.

"It's for the health and well-being of people, but healing is a skill and a profession. You may not need the money for an income now, but you should foster your profession and your reputation so you can use it if you do need it."

It was only that night, lying in bed beside Azula that Katara realized what he meant. He didn't think she and Azula would stay together. And that she was mooching off of Azula. Which, Katara realized, was kind of true. Azula's money paid for her clothing, her food, their entertainment, and all the supplies that Azula sent home with her.

"Oh," she said, disliking how this realization made her feel.

"Hm?" Azula lowered her book and turned her head. "What?"

"Nothing. Just thinking."

Azula set her book down entirely and blew out the lamp. She settled onto the pillows and sighed, a noise she made exclusively when she turned her mind off for the night.

"Do I cost a lot of money?"

Azula sat partly up. "What?"

"Feeding me."

Azula sighed deeply; this one expressed annoyance. "For Agni's sake. No. Go to sleep."

"How do you pay for all of this? Is it the throne's money?"

"Of course not. I make money."

"But you don't do anything."

"I _invest_ ," said as if Katara had insulted her. "I want you here. I love you. Don't insult me by proposing you must pay some sort of allowance."

"Oh. Okay."

Azula settled again, giving her pre-sleep sigh.

"I love you too," Katara thought to say.

"Good night," Azula retorted firmly.

For that, Katara snuggled up and kissed her shoulder.

* * *

Lady Han did very well through the following weeks, but Katara was roused by Kota late one night. Azula sat up with a gasp, but Katara pushed her back. "Go back to sleep. It's for me."

"What's wrong?"

"The lady is having her baby. I'll be back soon."

'Soon' turned out to be an exaggeration. Lady Han had contacted Tam and Katara at the first stirrings of contractions. It took her another day to be fully dilated. It was a trial to keep the lady from pushing, but they managed. Despite Lady Han's extreme exhaustion, when they told her to push, she did.

Katara had to gently reach inside the woman to reposition the baby's head, but at the next contraction, out came a healthy baby boy. Lady Han stared at her son as if she didn't believe he was real. His lusty bawls drew a slow, wide smile to his father's face. When he—cleaned and checked over—latched to Lady Han's breast, she began to weep.

"He's healthy?" she asked.

"Yes," Katara assured her. "Healthy."

Lady Han reached out and pulled Katara against her shoulder in a hard embrace. "Thank you," she whispered over and over.

All Katara wanted to do was take a bath and fall into bed, but she stayed another hour to help the lady deliver her placenta. She checked the placenta and talked to Tam about making sure it wasn't torn and there were no pieces remaining. Then she gently examined Lady Han and her child once more. They were both doing well; it was time for Katara and Tam to go.

Lord Han, an older man gaining fat around his middle, bowed deeply to Katara and Tam as they left. "Thank you for this gift."

On the carriage ride back to Azula's estate, Tam admitted, "I could not have done that alone."

"You need patience," Katara replied. "It wasn't a hard birth, just long. The baby fit through her canal, and he was positioned nearly right. He just needed a little help, and she needed to be told not to push too soon or she'd have torn herself."

"Thank you," Tam said quietly. "I was the doctor that saw to her first birth, and I'm afraid it went badly because of my own inexperience."

"Or they both might have died if you weren't there. If you ever need to ask me anything, I'll be happy to help," Katara told him.

"Thank you."

Finally, after a quick, wonderful bath, Katara slipped into bed. Azula stirred and rolled over, draping an arm over Katara's waist. Katara smoothed her fingertips over the soft skin on Azula's arm. If Azula had seen that little boy today, she might think of children differently. Though perhaps not about the birthing process.

"Did it go well?"

"I'm sorry I woke you."

"I wasn't asleep."

"It went well. Lord and Lady Han have a healthy baby boy to raise."

Azula rubbed Katara's stomach gently. "Go to sleep."

"I was," Katara mumbled, irritated at the command. The last thing she was aware of was Azula's irritated huff against her neck.


	19. Zuko

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Spans Books 1 to 3: Snapshots of Zuko's POV through MES.

When Mai spoke, Zuko was surprised she was still awake. He liked to lie awake at night and just talk into their silence, reasoning out his day or life or anything that was bothering him. It was great for Mai, who seemed to find his voice as powerful a narcotic as opium.

Tonight, halfway through his diatribe about Azula, Mai sat up sharply in bed.

"Are you okay?" he asked, for the moment thinking she was sleepwalking. That hadn't happened before; she only tended to snore when she was really tired.

"Let me get this straight, Zuko: you constantly bitch and whine about Azula not accepting Iroh has her father, but what you really want is for them never to be close."

Wow, she actually sounded angry. "That's not true—"

"Yes it is. You whine that only reason he came to the Fire Nation was for her, and you're the one who's benefiting from that in the first place. He's here, doing whatever it is that fat retired generals do, and he's doing a lot of that with you every day."

"But he—"

"Shut up and listen to me. All I ever hear when I'm around you is about how sucky your family life is. Guess what I see: a mother who loves you, an uncle who wishes he were your father, and a sister who tolerates you. Big fucking whoop. It must be _so_ hard to be Zuko, surrounded by people who love him."

"I've had plenty of hard family life too!" Zuko snapped, his anger rising in self-defense.

"You're not the only person in the world who's had your dad slap you around. Do you really think Azula didn't get smacked around by Ozai? She did, almost every day. So stop it with the woe-is-me bullshit. Ozai burned your face and sent you away with a man who loved you to wander the world for years. Such a hard life." Her voice dripped with sarcasm.

Zuko couldn't believe this. "Are you taking her side?"

"You need to stop being so pig-headed." Mai's sharp nail pricked his chest as she tapped him there. Her eyes were nearly back in the darkness. "Do you really think Azula wants Iroh to be her dad? How would you feel if someone told you Ursa wasn't your mother?"

Zuko leaned back against the headboard of the bed, relaxing slowly as he stared at Mai. "Are you still loyal to her?"

Mai shrugged. "She's my still my princess. And I'm really getting tired of only hearing you talk about how much your life sucks. Deal with it."

And just like that, she snuggled back up to his chest and started to snore less than five minutes later.

* * *

"You did this on purpose!" Ursa snapped, stomping out onto the balcony.

Zuko sloshed wine on his robes, feeling like a little kid in the face of his mother's anger. "What did I do?"

"You sent that water tribe girl to Azula, and she's seduced her!"

Iroh exhaled a batch of tea, Mai actually dropped her cup, and Zuko's wine spilled fully on his robes. He lurched to his feet to yank off his outer robe, throwing it off and wondering why he hadn't done it earlier. Ursa had said 'seduced', which probably was a figurative use of the word. "What did Katara do, exactly?"

"They're _sleeping together_ ," Ursa said, her cheeks pink. "Your sister is completely bewitched by that girl; it's completely inappropriate, completely ruining her reputation!"

Mai started to laugh harder than Zuko had ever witnessed. "Ty Lee was right!"

"Azula's a _lesbian_?!" he gasped. Then he thought about it again. " _Katara_ and _Azula_ are—they're—but—I don't understand."

"Well, well," Iroh murmured, having wiped his beard dry. "This is an interesting development."

"They're having _sex_?" Zuko finally managed to ask.

"Yes, they're having sex," Ursa snapped. "And it's your fault!"

Zuko stared at his mother. "I... What?"

* * *

Zuko contemplated the hem of his robes as he walked into his office. When he lifted his head, he jerked back in shock, taking a defensive stance before he could even think about it. Azula was sitting at his desk, flipping through a few documents calmly. She looked up at him and rolled her eyes in the height of condescension.

"What are you doing here?"

"Our mother made a few threats." Azula set the scroll down. "This is alarming, Zuko."

"What?" he asked, a chill running down his spine despite himself. Azula was probably just screwing around, but he couldn't help the reaction. Which, he realized with another shiver of unease, meant he trusted her to some extent.

"A man named Yun is a corporal in charge of the set of naval ships patrolling our colonies in western Earth Kingdom."

"They aren't our colonies anymore."

"We protect them from the pirates that are rampant along the way, so yes, they're still ours. They just don't pay taxes for said protection," Azula retorted.

It wasn't worth the argument. "What's wrong with Yun?"

"He's in Suzo's pocket."

"Suzo?" Zuko asked, his mind trying to sort the name out. The name was familiar, but he'd been juggling so many family names for so many months he couldn't entirely place it.

Azula leaned back, flapping the sheet of paper in her hand. "Suzo, who has a great deal to gain now that his rival, Lam, has been removed from his position as the private company that protected the said colonies and transported said colonies' merchandise ships."

Zuko opened his mouth to point out there was nothing related, and he looked back at Azula. Lam's small merchant fleet had been basically demolished by pirates, taking with it some of his men, some colonial civilians, and all of its cargo. Suzo, he realized, was all of a week away from being approved to take over Lam's position. Suzo, who owned a man that controlled the Fire Nation navy in that area of the seas. "Are you insinuating that Yun was paid by Suzo to allow in enemy forces to attack the ships moving in and out of the port, so that Lam would be forced out?"

"And now Suzo has submitted an application for taking his men and his ships to fill the void that now exists."

Zuko felt a shiver of fear. He knew a lot, a lot more than he'd known when he started those years ago, but there was still so much more than went on under the surface. He stared at the sheet. "What should I do?"

"Find someone else. Someone cheaper. Someone who you want to owe you a favor. Most importantly, get rid of Yun posthaste. Promote him—"

" _Promote_ him? You just said—"

"To a desk position somewhere far away from anywhere he can make any changes. Promote him to a position that's a dead-end so he can never again _be_ promoted."

It was a neat and quiet…efficient. Like the lie that had almost made him board the ship to the Fire Nation during the war, like the fall of Ba Sing Se, like the plan during the eclipse. Very Azula. Unlike those other things, Zuko didn't know the why of this generosity. Zuko watched his sister for a long moment.

Azula slowly raised her eyes. "What?"

"Why do you care? Why tell me this?"

"I wouldn't put it past Suzo to stage a faux rebellion, slaughter civilians, and incite a nice little conflict on the coast. We can't afford that financially or in the eyes of the international market. It's messy."

"Most of the people who live in those cities are Earth Kingdomers. You wanted all those people to burn just a few years ago." He didn't know what he wanted her to say or do, but he pushed anyway. He wanted some sort of answer to make sense of what it was that Azula wanted.

"It was war, Brother," Azula replied sharply. "They were enemies in that war. Now there's no war, and they aren't our enemies. What's the point of spending our money on them and not protecting them?"

"How can you just turn it off like that? They're the same people whether we're fighting them or protecting them."

Azula rolled her eyes and stood up. "No wonder all the world leaders are slobbering over peace. You never had the stomach for war."

"What would you have done if you'd won?"

Azula stopped beside him, her back rigid, her gaze straight ahead. Her hair was still short, barely past her shoulders, but the lines of her face were very much their mother. That didn't sting as much as it used to.

"Won what?" she asked quietly.

"If you'd won the war."

She remained silent for a long time. "If Sozin's Comet hadn't come to pass, I would have declared Agni Kai against Father, killed him, ascended the throne, and launched a war of attrition on the Earth Kingdom. I would have brought them famine, plague, and death more than they would have ever known. I would have broken their spirit. The North would have fallen soon after." She glanced at him. "And then there would have been no more war."

For a long time after she left, he pondered those words. Zuko sat at his desk, and instead of the thousands of things he needed to do, he stared out of his balcony and turned those words over and over again. _"And then there would have been no more war."_

Shit. There was no way.

Ozai had fought the war for blood and his own personal glory. And Zuko's sister, who was just as ruthless, cruel, and evil as Ozai, just claimed she would have won the war for peace.

Iroh had always taught Zuko perspective: see things from more than one angle. But now Zuko saw biases in Iroh's perspective. He'd never cared to explain why anyone would want to fight a war like the Hundred Year War. Wars had been waged for as long as men could travel far enough to meet each other. Sozin launched the war for the glory of the Fire Nation. Azula apparently would have ended it to glorify the entire world in her way.

She was wrong, but… She was his little sister, and it was becoming a little bit easier to think of her that way.

* * *

Zuko hunkered down against his balcony railing, staying silent to overhear the strangest conversation he'd ever eavesdropped on. Mai quietly exited their shared apartment, and stared down at him dubiously. He quickly made a 'hush' gesture before she could voice her obvious question, and motioned for her to sit next to him.

Mai opened her mouth and closed it when laughter came up from the gardens.

It was Katara's voice, too low to make out words. Then more laughter. Mai raised an eyebrow at Zuko, but she remained where she was.

"Mai put in a new bed in my apartment," Azula said suddenly. "Though it is a nice bed, so I suppose I can forgive it."

Zuko turned his head at the silence, and his jaw dropped to see Katara and Azula actually kissing. Gross. And weird. Katara was sitting in Azula's lap, and she leaned her head against Azula's shoulder. And Azula… Her expression was soft and open, tender, which was the weirdest fucking thing Zuko had ever seen.

"We should try out that new bed," Katara said, sitting up.

Azula followed her inside, and the last thing they heard was, "If it breaks, I can have my old bed back."

"Everyone wins."

"Well," Mai said. "Thank you for forcing me to listen to that. I need to go scrub my ears and eyes with lye water."

"That was really weird, right?" he asked as he followed her inside.

"You eavesdropping on your sister and her lover? Yes."

"No. _Them_. I've never seen Azula look like that."

"You aren't her lover, are you?" Mai asked. She sighed and slipped an arm around his neck, pulling him close to kiss his mouth. "I hope you don't look at her the way you look at me." She tossed him a saucy look as she turned on one heel and walked into their bedroom.

Well, hard to resist that. He hastened to follow.

* * *

Trust Azula to turn a coup attempt into a game. Zuko had thought it was a good way to occupy her boundless energy… At least until Azula was attacked in the streets. His men couldn't give him a satisfactory answer as to the identity of the attackers, and he found himself losing sleep over it.

"You and your sister are so stupid," Mai told him one morning after a particularly fitful night. "Just arrest them and be done with it."

"I can't do that."

"What you mean is you don't want to do that."

It was true, as stupid as that made him feel. Azula would tell him if she felt in danger. Of course, this was the same girl who fell off of a war balloon and caught herself on the rocks with her hairpiece. His conscience prickled at that particular thought. Azula was so self-confident she didn't see danger where danger lurked.

Whatever guilt and worry he felt through the weeks before his wedding were erased when he witnessed a handful of Dai Li agents burst from the ground at his wedding. _Dai Li!_ It was going to put their relationship back with the Earth Kingdom years. She'd never said a word about contacting them, or dragon forbid, keeping them under her employ since the war.

And then Azula had the audacity to accept an agni kai challenge. Whatever situation he thought he had a handle on was rapidly spinning out of control. Azula did what Azula had always done: take over and get shit done. Despite that, he almost doubted her, especially after Iroh told him the truth about Azula's bending.

Zuko should have known better. Azula killed her opponent in seconds, and he could only shake his head. He wouldn't have done any better being able to firebend. Trust Azula to go above and beyond.

Maybe he could set aside a few weeks to travel with his sister to see the Sun Warriors. That ought to fix her right up. Zuko was crazy for even considering it, but he wanted that for her. Maybe after his private wedding...

* * *

"It's not your fault."

Zuko took another sip of fire whiskey and sighed, watching dully as the gray of morning shifted into dawn.

"Zuko."

Mai's voice held real worry.

"You were more helpful than I was. All I could do was just…" He shook his head and looked at his hands. There was still blood caked under his fingernails nearly a week later.

Mai's hand slipped around his neck, and she bent to kiss the side of his face before pulling him into a loose hug. "She'll survive this."

"Our father." He laughed bitterly and shook his head. " _My_ father. He did this to her."

"You're not like him."

"I'm her big brother. I'm supposed to protect her, and all I've done is let her get hurt."

Mai's grip tightened, and she laughed bitterly. "Do you really think Azula would take your supposed protection? She's lived her entire life protecting herself. She doesn't know any better. All of this was her making."

"I told her to—"

"Like she would have stopped if you told her 'no'!"

It gave him pause, and Mai smiled at him gently for it. "Don't feel guilty for a situation that was her own doing. Azula will rise from this just as strong as she was before. She's that annoying indestructible."

"Who did she get that from?" he wondered.

"Iroh obviously."

Zuko laughed abruptly. He leaned his head on Mai's shoulder and sighed.

"Come to bed. Sleep for a little while, and then we'll go see her again."

He nodded, got up, and let his wife take care of him.

* * *

_-5 years later-_

"Excuse me, Fire Lord."

Zuko glanced up from trying and failing to entice Rina to eat carrots. He'd eaten more on her plate than she had at this point. Zuko's bodyservant bowed with a letter in his hand. They were in a restaurant in the noble district, and this was a time when politics was not allowed. Mai wasn't a strict about it as his mom, but he didn't like to interrupt his time with his kids. "I'll read it later."

"Fire Lord, it's a letter from your sister."

Zuko hesitated. He glanced at Mai, who pointedly did not offer an opinion. He took the scroll. It wasn't sealed with Azula's snooty dragon seal. It had been opened already too. This was all a little weird. Zuko unrolled it. Well, why not; this was technically family. "Kids, you want to hear what your aunt wrote?"

"Auntie Azula!" Tozin said with a grin. Rina used this as an excuse to push her plate away.

Mai heaved a sigh, but she smiled and placed a kiss on Tozin's dark head.

Zuko cleared his throat and pitched his voice high in his best Azula impression:

"'Most prestigious and powerful Fire Lord Zuko.'"

Rina giggled.

"'Greetings and salutations from the cold shores of the South Pole, et cetera ad nauseam.'"

"Did she really write that?" Mai asked.

"Yes. 'As much as I…love writing to my…awesome, favorite big brother during my vacation, I thought I should send word of my news.'"

Zuko read the next sentence silently without surprise. "Well, we expected…" He frowned when he read the second sentence. "Okay, weird. Azula and Katara got married. And apparently Katara adopted a kid." He sighed when he read the rest of the paragraph. Of course Azula would teach her new kid to call him a poopy head. He wasn't reading that aloud in front of his kids. They'd drop 'Daddy' in a heartbeat to call him that.

He continued reading the next paragraph. "'I've had many interesting experiences in the South Pole. We'll be returning at some point in the next few weeks. I do require one favor. Would you outlaw…'" His voice trailed off as he tried to figure out why exactly Azula had written that statement.

"What?" Mai actually looked curious now.

"'Would you outlaw dragon hunting?'"

Zuko glanced up at Mai, who shrugged. "Don't look at me. Your sister is nuts."

"Nuts!" Rina gasped.

"Yep, nuts." Zuko reached out to pick up a peanut from Mai's plate and put it on Rina's. "Don't they taste great?!"

She turned away with her nose up.

Zuko knew when to admit defeat. He reached out to sip his tea and saw there was print below Azula's flamboyant signature. He read it.

Zuko exhaled, and his mouthful of tea sprayed across the table. Mai's expression went tight as she wordlessly reached out to take his napkin and wipe her face off. Even the children understood the danger of that moment; they watched their mother with wide eyes. Zuko attempted to apologize even as he coughed up the tea he'd inhaled, but she lifted a finger in sharp warning to be quiet. Then she reached out and took the letter from him.

Mai stared at the letter in her hand, and her expression of anger melted into simple shock. "'Postscript: I can firebend again. Post-postscript: I tamed a dragon too.'"

* * *

In bed, Mai shifted around with her mountain of pillows until she had her usual barrier on either side. Thankfully their bed was huge or Zuko would be sleeping on the floor. "What are you going to do?" she asked.

A dragon. If it was true, this was the out he needed. Azula would want the throne now that she could firebend. And with a dragon, the Fire Nation would welcome her with open arms. He could pack up and leave, say goodbye to the long hours, the headaches, and the annoying noble drama. He could go to Republic City and watch it start from the ground up. Aang needed him there, and he could own something entirely new.

It still hurt to think of letting his nation go.

"I'm going to give it to her." He didn't sound as certain as he meant to.

"Are you sure?" she asked him without a hint of censure or doubt. He loved her just for that. She wouldn't care if he was a Fire Lord or a tea shop assistant as long as he loved her, loved their kids, and maintained a comfortable household for them all. So he didn't care if she wanted a part of the Fire Nation or not.

When he'd started dating her during the war, he never imagined they'd end up the way they were now. Even if there was a mound of pillows between them. Zuko reached out to snitch one, and Mai made a noise that meant, 'Do it and die.'

"Just one," he wheedled.

"Fine," she muttered with a long-suffering sigh.

Mai really did love him.

"Do you trust her?" Mai asked after a few minutes of quiet.

Trust his sister? Trust Azula?

The answer of that was a firm yes. During the war, he would have battened down the hatches and brought all of his guards to the capital for protection. Now he knew Azula wasn't a threat, at least in the traditional sense. He didn't know quite how his trust had formed; it was probably all of those stupid hugs they'd suffered for their mother's sake. Or maybe having to defend her from the few attempts to 'try' Azula for her actions in Ba Sing Se. One of those meetings was the only one Ursa ever sat in, and she'd completely cowed the usually unflappable Ba Sing Se reps. King Bumi's representative shrugged when they turned to him for support. "King Bumi likes her," he'd said. That was the end of the matter.

It still made Zuko smirk. If Ursa had been Fire Lady at any point in her life, she would have walked all over the Fire Nation.

Maybe he trusted Azula because he'd learned to work with her the last few years. Who the hell would have guessed they turn into a functional family?

"If she wanted to kill me, she wouldn't have written me in the first place."

"She could still kill you."

"Thanks," Zuko muttered. It still hurt his pride a little bit that his little sister was better than him at pretty much everything.

"She always could," Mai admitted. She said it to be supportive, as contrary as it sounded.

"I trust her," Zuko said truthfully. "And I trust her with the Fire Nation."

"As long as Katara's around, Azula's a sack of putty anyway," Mai muttered. "I can't believe she just adopted a kid out of nowhere like that."

"You know, she still hasn't thanked me." It wasn't the first time he'd said it. Mai was quiet. "I guess I'll just point it out at their wedding. 'You're welcome for introducing you.' Well…introducing you a second time, after the war ended. So that you two could realize your undying love for each other. I still don't know how they work as a couple. Did they just look at each other and decide to be girlfriends? Did you guess it would happen?"

Mai answered with a soft snore.

Zuko smiled in the darkness. He'd figure it out in the morning.

* * *

He was most afraid of what Iroh would say, but when Zuko looked at his uncle, he saw no disappointment.

"Are you disappointed?" he asked anyway.

Iroh sighed and slowed his walk. He rubbed his beard. "I'm not disappointed. I worry that you're doing this for the wrong reason."

"This is what I want."

"Is it?" Iroh asked him quietly. "I worry you'll have regrets."

"You don't think Azula's going to do a bad job, do you?"

Iroh shook his head. "No. But I'm not so certain she'll accept."

He had to be kidding. That had to be some sort of crazy joke. Of course Azula would accept. Iroh read his doubt and continued, "She wants different things now, Zuko. Just like you do."

* * *

It took a full week after Azula had returned to the Fire Nation before he had all the details ironed out…well, the details he had to have ironed out done. There were still a million others that Azula could take care of. Zuko was surprised every time they met that Azula didn't broach the topic herself. She obviously knew what was going on. The fact that she seemed unwilling to ask him made Zuko wonder if she was going to decline.

That was why he waited until the tapestry was finished to ask her.

Hook, line, and sinker.

Azula looked up at her tapestry expressionlessly. Then she smiled and laughed. She looked at Zuko and said, "No."

She'd just looked at her Fire Lord tapestry and said no. Zuko gaped at her, stunned beyond belief by that answer. Were they going to be the first two royal siblings to fight over who got to _not_ be Fire Lord?

"What?"

"And yes."

She'd just said no and then yes.

Zuko groaned, his feelings fluctuating between disappointment and relief. He put his face in his hands. "Why are you always such a headache? What do you want? Yes or no."

"I want both. Just like you do," she said calmly. She met his eyes. "Shall we compromise?"

He wanted to cry. Why didn't she talk like a normal person? "What are you talking about?"

Of course Azula continued her thought without explaining herself. "It will take good communication between us. And compromise every day. But we if do it right, we both get what we want. You can go play around with Republic City. I can be with Katara when she goes home with our children. And we can both do our duties for our nation without fail."

Zuko's brain stopped. He was positive she'd just broken him with that word. Was that a scar on her ear? "Children?" And then he realized what she wanted. His jaw dropped. "You mean we'd both be Fire Lord."

"Ding, ding ding!" she sneered. Azula finished that off with a roll of her eyes. "That took longer than I expected."

It wasn't worth taking offense to. Zuko was also too busy being flummoxed to respond in that way. "But…we'd kill each other. We can't both have veto power, and law making would be impossible—"

"As I said," Azula replied. "It will take a great deal of compromise and communication. I would suggest at least for now that we spearhead our own causes separately. You'll need to be very nice to the Earth Kingdom ambassadors to be sure they don't do something silly when they find out about my new title. When we do travel, we'll have to leave specific instructions behind. We'll pay a fortune in postage, of course, but—"

Azula was a genius. She was a fucking genius. It was so simple, but it had never been done before so he hadn't even thought about it. Azula had probably not even considered they would be the first true coregency ever in the Fire Nation. But what did Azula care? She thought she could do anything. And right then, Zuko thought he could too.

"Yes," Zuko said. He grinned and a weight shifted from his shoulders. "Yes, I'll do it."

He held out his hand.

Azula raised her eyebrows. "You aren't going to spit in your palm like a hoodlum, are you?"

"That would be fuddy-duddy, wouldn't it?" he retorted, amused by the stupid-sounding words she always used.

Azula looked at him like he was an idiot. "Do you have any idea what that word actually means?"

He stared at his sister. "That's a real word?"

She was highly insulted by that. "Of course it's a real word. Do you think I walk around and speak gibberish? It means old-fashioned."

"Why don't you just say old-fashioned then?!"

"Some of us have vocabularies that extend beyond three tired words."

Zuko groaned in frustration. Azula rolled her eyes and put her hand in his. They shook firmly.

"Fire Lord Zuko," she said.

"Fire Lord Azula," he replied and then grumbled, "Poopy head."

"Dumb-dumb."

This was going to work.


	20. Recovery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> During and after the epilogue of Book 2 of MES. Katara POV with random Ursa POV thrown in.

Katara dipped her brush into the small flask of ink on the desk and stared at it for a long moment. Three weeks. She'd delayed her return to home for three weeks…and they had been the longest three weeks of her life. She felt like she'd aged ten years since Zuko and Mai's wedding. The time was insane. The cause of it all was worse.

She put her brush on the paper and wrote:

_Ozai did it._

She stared at her brush, stared at the paper, and wondered why she would open a letter to her family like that. Sokka had already written their dad and Gran Gran about what had happened, but this was the first time Katara could put together two thoughts enough to write to them. After hearing confirmation of who had ordered Azula's murder, her mind was no longer working again.

They'd known since the archer had been conscious enough to give them an answer, but even then Katara hadn't wanted to believe the truth. She didn't think Ozai was anything more than an irredeemable bastard, but it was still a stretch to imagine he could want to murder a woman he considered his daughter. And yet he'd tried.

Ozai had ordered the death of the only person in the world who still cared about him enough to visit him. Who paid for his care. Who was the reason he'd been moved to a more comfortable place to live. Zuko was convinced Ozai must have found out about Azula's actual parentage, but Iroh had been uncharacteristically grave when he said it wasn't as likely as Zuko believed. He'd been very quiet in the last few weeks, coming by to sit beside Azula and talk softly or just hold her hand. Katara assumed his silence was out of fear, like her own, but during that painful conversation, she realized he was angry.

Ursa was angry too, but it was that of barely controlled panic, a lot like Katara's had been—was still. Except right now, Katara was just numb.

Family… Family didn't do this to each other.

She listened for a long moment, focusing on the heavy inspiratory breaths that Azula took in the other room. Azula's physician, Ling, called it inspiratory stridor. He used a lot of words that Katara was finally starting to understand. Even when she had memorized what every structure looked like in a human neck, she hadn't understood how all the parts worked. She'd been wrong about quite a few things, like the assumption that Azula's trachea was closed off when she was eating and drinking. That failure to close had resulted in aspiration pneumonia on top of the infection caused by the arrows that went through her chest…her thorax. She still coughed when she drank and ate, terrifying Katara that she was choking.

Ling used words like recurrent laryngeal nerve, arytenoid cartilage, aspiration pneumonia, paradoxical movement, pleural effusion, pulmonary edema, laryngeal paralysis, pneumothorax, thoracotomy, tracheostomy, lavage, coupage, and so many more. Learning those words was like learning a new language, and each one brought another flush of terror.

Many of the procedures he told her about were worst-case: they would only perform them if it was certain Azula would die without that intervention, in which case she could die from the procedures themselves. They did what they could to ease the burden from Azula: sat her up in bed, held her head high when she couldn't breathe, and sedated her when she got too desperate for air. So far she hadn't needed a radical surgery.

One certain truth remained: if Azula didn't get better in six months, she never would.

Katara had taken to listening to Azula all the time, especially in another room. Now she closed her eyes and listened to the painful sound of Azula breathing against the tissues in her own throat. It was a steady noise, thankfully not one of desperation. Hopefully Azula was asleep.

_I have to stay. Azula needs me. I miss you all, and I love you all._

She nearly closed the letter but continued with a shaky hand:

_Azula has gotten a little better… Or I hope she has. I pray she has. It was… I was really afraid last week. She nearly didn't make it through the night. She turned blue…cyanotic, her physician calls it. I was so stupid. She'd fallen off of her pillows, and the idiot didn't wake me up until she was suffocating._

_Ling says her throat is paralyzed…that part you use to talk. It's in charge of more than that though, and there're two pieces of flesh that close together like lips. They're supposed to open when we inhale. Azula's don't work right. She's got scarring all around that area, but the part of her that's in charge of telling them to open when she breathes doesn't work, so they slap closed when she inhales. She has to breathe against them._

_I can't do anything for her._

Katara stared at that last sentence and wanted to tear up the paper in her hands. What was the use of waterbending if she couldn't fix the person she loved? Why was she so fucking useless? Katara took a deep breath, something she didn't take for granted anymore, and placed her trembling hand flat on the cool polished wood of the desk.

_We just have to wait and see. Ling told me that this sort of injury happens rarely, but they have case reports from physicians all over the world. There seems to be a cutoff point at six months for recovery. If Azula doesn't get better before then, she won't._

_I'm so scared. What if she doesn't? What if_

' _What if I did this to her?'_ she was going to write. Katara dropped her face in her hand and wiped away her tears angrily. Ling had told her Azula would have died if Katara hadn't healed what she could immediately after the injury. Katara had to trust him; the alternative was something she couldn't bear.

He tried once to tell her it could have been worse: tracheal collapse, spinal cord injury, laceration of the great vessels of Azula's chest… It had only taken him a moment of seeing her reaction to immediately stop listing those scenarios. In the end, worse was death.

Regardless, Katara couldn't leave. She had to be sure that Azula would make it through this. If she was gone and Azula—

She couldn't leave.

_So I'm going to stay. I don't know when I can come back. Write me and let me know how everyone is doing. I'll update you when I can._

_Love,_

_Katara_

She sealed the letter and set it in the little wicker basket that all of Azula's outgoing mail went into, waiting for one of her staff members to take it to the post in the morning. Katara rubbed her face, put on a smile, and walked into the bedroom.

It was like stepping into a tropical jungle. Ling had set up a water boiler that also evaporated incense. The moisture helped Azula's throat, and the incense was supposed to also help her lungs.

Azula wasn't asleep. She watched Katara with an intensity that meant she had a request. She looked so weak. She'd dropped so much weight despite it only being a few weeks since she'd been so healthy. That was another word Ling used: cachexia, and word that had horrified Katara when she looked it up in one of the many medical texts stacked around Azula's apartment.

"What do you need, baby?"

Azula used one finger to tap the paper next to her. She looked so exhausted. There were dark shadows under her eyes. It was hard for her to sleep with the effort she took to breathe. Ling had suggested placing a wide tube from her mouth to her trachea, but Azula refused, and she was aware enough that Katara knew she couldn't force it. In the worst case, they would have to surgically open Azula's tracheal and place a tube there for her to breathe through.

Ling spoke of all the complications: inflammation, infection, tracheal collapse, further damage to the nerves supplying Azula's larynx… The procedure was getting better, but it was still bad and the equipment they would have to use would just increase the damage to the area of Azula's trachea that was working perfectly well.

So they let her be and hoped for the best.

She was napping constantly, eating when bid, and interactive even rendered mute. Her fever had gone down, she demanded daily baths, and she usually moved to the sitting room for a few hours a day. This was tremendous improvement. There wasn't much else Katara could ask for right now.

She still wished there was more they could do for her. She and Ling had many long conversations about medicine, surgery, and healing. It had stunned Katara to hear that waterbending healing actually slowed the progress of non-bending therapies. She wasn't sure she believed it, and yet… This man knew more about the human body than any waterbender she knew. Katara certainly learned that she had taken that knowledge for granted. There had to be some way to marry her skills with Ling's knowledge, especially his extensive knowledge of analgesics.

They kept Azula on an opioid analgesic. Ling called it a sedative antitussive. It helped a little with the pain, a lot with Azula's painful coughing, and a great deal more with keeping her quiet and calm. Even then sometimes they had to give her another sedative when she began to panic for more air.

Katara brushed her fingertips over Azula's as she settled on the bed. She tried to read what was on the paper. It was written in the phonetic script of the Fire Nation, and her tired mind had trouble sounding out those symbols. Katara rubbed her eyes and tried to focus on the writing. Azula waited for a few patient moments before she picked up the pen and wrote the morpheme for cat.

"You want Tonky?" Katara asked, startled.

Azula nodded firmly. Katara leaned close to kiss her gently. Why hadn't she thought of that? "I'll go tell Kota."

A hand on her own stopped her progress. Azula met her eyes in a long look, and she squeezed Katara's hand. Katara picked up that hand and kissed it. "I love you," Katara told her softly. Azula looked at her very seriously as she brushed her fingertips across Katara's cheek.

Katara understood what she meant.

* * *

"You look like you need a drink."

Katara jumped and turned her head from where she'd been staring at the dragon carved into one of the balcony rails. It was an elegant carving, not like the more realistic paintings of Sozen's blue dragon that littered the palace. There was a deep gouge through the dragon's body, damage that had been polished over time and time again. She hadn't noticed the imperfection until now. She glanced over at Ling, who poured her a cup of tea. He removed a flask from his robes and dripped a few drops of clear liquid into it.

"No. I can't. I need to be ready—"

"You need sleep as much as Princess Azula does."

It was hard to sleep when all she did in bed was listen for Azula's next breath.

Ling poured himself a more generous portion of liquor in his tea. He sipped his tea and sighed. "And just when I was contemplating retirement. There hasn't been much for me to do since the war ended."

His voice was dark with stress and displeasure. He was a naturally dry man, and Katara knew he was unhappy with Azula's current condition. She asked him, "What do you mean?"

"I was appointed…" Ling raised his eyes towards his bald head. Azula was right, his nose hairs were more numerous than the ones on his head. "Oh, forty years ago? I served as an apprentice for half of those years, but I saw every case that my predecessor did while I lived in this palace. The royal family is prone to injury."

"Azula probably saw you every day."

He smiled and shook his head. "Rarely, in fact. Only if her burns became infected. Fire Lord Ozai raised her as he was raised: burns are no injury. And if something is not an injury, it should not be treated. So they gritted their teeth and bore the pain. I did prescribe her a great many analgesics. Willow bark extract was a particular favorite. It helped with other injuries as well." He took another sip of tea.

"Other injuries?" Katara found herself asking with a voice trembling in barely controlled anger.

"Contusions," he said simply. "Scrapes. Small things. The Princess's worst injuries were self-inflicted."

"What?!" Katara gasped.

Ling glanced at her in surprise. "Oh, not on purpose. Purely accidental. Princess Azula is an avid firebender, or she was as a girl. All young proficient firebenders have a penchant to self-burning. They can't help it. It's just the nature of the element. They want their flame to be stronger, better, hotter, and that flame takes that strength and heat and becomes its own animal.

"The worst cases, though… Those are the lightning cases. It's like clockwork. Princess Azula came to me just after Fire Lord Zuko was banished. Burns to her feet but no entry burn: common for a self-inflicted lightning injury. She had an abnormal heartbeat that resolved after a few days. I was fearful of pulmonary edema, but…" He shook his head. "Fire Lord Ozai had the same injury at that age. As did General Iroh. Azulon and Sozin both did the same.

"I don't know if their age or their bloodline keeps them safe from the usual effects of lightning. Thankfully it occurs on the first attempt, when their ability to create that energy is far less than after practice."

"Why would they ever think that's a good idea?"

Lin smiled gently. "Firebending prodigies believe they are the best. They think they can do anything, especially in this family. In many cases they're right. In the case of lightning…" He shook his head.

"How could you know what Ozai was doing to her and not do anything?"

When Ling met her eyes, his own were dark and unhappy. "What was done was the same that had been done for hundreds of years. The Fire Lord trains his own sons and daughters in the way he was trained because it's what has worked for centuries. This family has kept the throne longer than any other without a break in their line. Who am I to intervene if that training doesn't cause permanent harm?"

"Bodily harm," Katara said quietly. "You mean bodily harm. Because it definitely did do permanent harm."

Ling looked at her with vague regret. "We all fight our own battles," he said softly. "My place is to ease pain when allowed. I did as much as I was allowed. I knew at least I could trust myself to do that. Could I trust whoever Fire Lord Ozai would appoint after me if I overstepped?"

"I hate this country," Katara said bitterly, staring at her teacup.

"Do you?" Ling asked her gently. "This country is the reason Princess Azula is the way she is. Would you love her otherwise?"

* * *

Ursa sat down gently on the bed, but Azula didn't stir. It was hard to know if she was awake, but at least her skin was cool to the touch. Her infection was low-grade, no longer causing a raging fever, and the physician seemed to think the infection was regressing a little bit at a time. The dappled cat on the bed next to Azula opened her eyes to look at Ursa disdainfully. That silly animal only budged from Azula's side to eat and use Ursa's garden as her lavatory.

But the bearded cat seemed to comfort Azula, who needed all the comfort in the world right now.

Her poor little girl.

Ursa brushed her fingertips across Azula's cheek, and Azula turned her face into that touch. Ursa's strong, emotionally independent daughter had never accepted touch the way she did now. Now even the faintest suggestion of a smile gently curved the edges of Azula's mouth. She opened her golden eyes and looked at Ursa from where she leaned against her hand.

Ursa burst into tears.

How had Ozai done this?

Azula touched her face, and Ursa clutched at her fingers as she calmed herself. "I'm sorry," she said, wiping her eyes on her sleeves. What the hell did she care about using a handkerchief?

Azula tapped the bed to her right side. Ursa climbed up onto the bed and reached out to help Azula position her writing tablet, pen, and paper. Azula's fingers flicked in certain decline. Ever independent. She did it herself. After a moment, Azula wrote: _Who_?

She'd been writing that word for weeks. They'd all been putting her off for only a few. The archer had taken a few days to recover, though he had been willing to tell them the truth about who had ordered the assassination. Zuko had allocated as many soldiers as he could to capture Ozai, but Ozai and his ally had fled to the independent lands of the northern Air Nomad islands. The Dai Li were all gone on their own search except two men that remained in constant watch over Azula. Ursa bet on them finding Ozai first. It was just a matter of whether they would kill him or bring him back alive.

Ursa wrung her hands. Azula's expression hardened, and she looked at Ursa with some of her old sternness. She deserved to know, as much as it terrified Ursa to think of how Azula would react.

Azula put her pen gently against her paper and tapped that word.

"Ozai."

Azula's expression didn't change. Her eyes turned away to stare across the room. Azula turned back to the paper and wrote: _Why_?

Ursa opened her mouth to explain, and Azula wrote _Why_? again. And again. And again, until the paper was black and torn and her feather pen snapped and splattered ink across the coverlet and Azula's hand.

Then Azula gave a heavy, painful breath that Ursa privately thought was as close to a sigh as she could make. This entire time, she hadn't shed one tear. "Do you want more paper before I explain?" Ursa asked.

Azula nodded, giving her ink-stained hand a regretful look.

It took her servant a few minutes to clean everything up. When they were alone again, Ursa sat next to Azula and met her eyes. She hesitantly touched Azula's shoulder, surprised when she wasn't rebuffed. "He's escaped with his ally. We think the warden of his prison orchestrated everything for him."

Azula's jaw tightened, and then oddly, she smiled. It wasn't a happy smile.

"The archer told us. He'll be executed when we have Ozai in custody."

_How long have you known?_

"We found journals hidden away in the compound." Ursa hated to think about the illogical, raging ramblings of a man who she used to have some measure of affection for.

_Why?_

"Because of Katara," Ursa confirmed.

Azula's teeth clenched. She turned her eyes away. And finally, tears rose to her eyes.

When they caught Ozai… He should be drawn and quartered as far as Ursa was concerned, but Zuko would never do something like that. Azula wouldn't want it either. So Ursa kept her desires quiet. Iroh had been frightening recently with his brooding anger. And poor Katara… She'd burst into tears when Zuko told them all the truth.

"They know where he went. They're going to bring him back."

_Does Katara know?_

"Yes."

Azula's mouth pursed in displeasure.

* * *

Katara opened her eyes in the darkness of the night, uncertain about what had woken her. She closed her eyes and sighed, drifting slowly off to sleep, by now resigned to the coating of sweat on her skin from the steam treatment. And then she realized what had woken her: silence.

She couldn't hear Azula breathing.

Katara sat up in fear and reached out to touch the still form, reclined on only a few pillows. When had she pushed her pillows away? She needed to be sitting up higher to make it easier to breathe…

Azula's hand was warm beneath hers. Katara gasped when she saw the shallow but steady rise and fall of her chest. Now she heard the faint rasping sound of inspiration. Gone was her full stridor though. The heavy, labored, wheezing gasp wasn't there, replaced by a softer noise altogether.

Azula stirred. Her eyes opened momentarily, and she smiled and reached out to touch Katara's face. Azula's hand cupped her head, and she pulled Katara against her side. It was the first time they would be like this since Azula had been hurt, though Katara had switched the side of bed she slept on to avoid Azula's injured right side. On the pillow to Azula's right side, Tonky got up, circled, and lay back down with a sigh.

She was too afraid to put much pressure on Azula's weak chest, but Katara eventually settled the full weight of her head there. She closed her eyes and listened to the steady beat of Azula's heart. It was a slow beat, maybe one beat per second, but its rate increased slightly with each inhalation. It meant Azula wasn't in pain for the first time in weeks. Azula's breaths were relatively clear, and they were deeper than they had been. She had regained some function back, enough that she wasn't breathing against her own tissues.

Katara took a shaky breath, relieved and terrified in turn. This could mean Azula had turned to the road of recovery. Or, an unhappy fearful part of her whispered, it could mean Azula was about to die.

The next morning, Katara awoke to an empty bed. She got up and found Azula on the settee with a book and a cat both in her lap. Her breathing was still soft. There was a plate with a few remnants of softly stirred eggs and boiled oats on a small table beside her. She saw Katara and smiled.

Katara sat down on the floor and leaned against Azula's side, content to hold her hand in that moment.

* * *

"What's wrong?"

Katara took one look at Iroh and burst into tears. He drew her close to him, and she sobbed against his shoulder until she was hiccoughing and couldn't find her breath.

Iroh hushed her gently and pulled them to sit by the garden path. "What's this?" he asked her.

"She told me to leave."

Iroh pulled Katara back against him, and she continued crying, shaking and unhappy and afraid. "What if she needs me?"

"I don't think she would tell you to leave if she thought she wouldn't manage without you." Iroh's expression was sober but gentle. He'd lost whatever darkness he'd carried around him while Ozai was still alive. Katara, Zuko, and Ursa had been worried when Iroh left the day of Ozai's execution. They said nothing about the fact Ozai had a swollen, bruised cheek when he hanged.

Katara hoped Iroh told Ozai that Azula wasn't his daughter. She hoped it hurt Ozai as much as he had hurt Azula.

"She's worried about you," Iroh continued gently. "She may need some time to focus on healing and not have to worry over you."

"Why would she worry about me? She's the one who's so hurt—"

"She loves you, and she knows you aren't happy."

Katara did want to go home, but she didn't want to leave Azula. She'd asked Ling desperately if she could take Azula with her, but he'd been grave as he told her in all certainty that the cold, dry air, the stress of the trip, and the unfamiliar place would kill Azula. She'd known, but she had hoped…

"What if I leave and she—" Katara couldn't say it.

"She won't die," Iroh said. For once his voice was sharp. "You should go home, be with your family, and come back. Even if you're only gone for a few weeks, it will be good for both of you."

* * *

Gran Gran and her dad were waiting for her as she stepped off the ship onto the ice of her home. Katara staggered into Gran Gran's arms, weeping again. Gran Gran's hands were rough and gentle against her head. Then, so gently, she pushed Katara into Hakoda's arms, and Katara settled against his broad, strong chest and took comfort in her father.

They watched her with real worry when she pulled back. Hakoda was a little pale. "What happened?"

Katara realized they didn't know Azula was okay. "She's better. She's okay. I'm just…" Katara wiped her face quickly, and her voice softened from the tightness of her tears. "I'm really worried."

"How bad is she?" Hakoda asked. Katara knew him well enough to know he wasn't asking that out of some awful hope that Azula wouldn't get better. Her daddy didn't like Azula, but he would never wish her death.

"Bad. Really bad. But she's better."

Gran Gran took Katara's arm. "Let's have some tea. I made seal sausage."

Oh, seal sausage. Possibly the most comforting food ever made anywhere.

Sitting in her grandmother's hut, eating a rich stew of seaweed and seal sausage flavored with sour sea prune essence, Katara was home again. A heavy weight lifted from her shoulders, immediately placing the heavy weight of guilt back on them. After a few minutes, Pakku entered the hut, offered a stiff but wanted hug, and poured himself a bowl.

"I was arguing with Aang. I heard someone scream—a painful scream—and Zuko was shouting. But someone fell through the patio, and I didn't realize… I finally looked over, and I saw—" Katara took a shuddering breath. She saw Azula crouched, with her hands flat on the ground, Zuko bent over her. His skin had been so white against the puckered red of his scar.

She hadn't understood why Azula would be reaching for something on the ground, and then she'd realized.

Everyone had been running over. Katara didn't remember much about getting to Azula, or seeing her injuries, except that crystal moment of shock when she'd reached out to fix, heal, make whole again and realized that she didn't know what the hell she was doing. It wasn't a burn. It wasn't a broken bone with the so easy to feel blood vessels and muscles of the limbs. It wasn't a bruise, with the steady sense of blood flushing into an area.

It was a penetrating wound through tissues with so much blood and lymph flowing in all different directions that she couldn't make much sense of what was going on. So she'd done what she could to stop the bleeding and close the wound. She should have waited, but she wasn't sure Azula would have made it if they'd left the arrow in her throat.

They'd kept the arrow in her chest until they could transport her to the ward in the palace. They'd cut her robes off, carefully sawed off the edges of the shaft, and gently removed it as Katara went behind to heal the damage she could. The lungs were hard too: so much air intertwined with blood and tissue. She could sense each lobe and the great vessels, but all the capillaries and tiny air bubbles (alveoli) in the lungs were too numerous, too small, and too haphazard.

Someone touched her hand. Katara felt her own tears hit her wrists, and she looked up to meet Pakku's concerned gaze. He said, "I have no doubt that Azula was in the best hands for her injuries. I have never met a waterbender healer that would ever want to trade places with you. The neck is one of the most difficult areas to heal if only for the fact it is almost entirely blood and tissue."

"I could have caused more damage—"

"Possibly you did," he said not unkindly. "But you also saved her life. What's losing her voice to losing her life?"

Oh. Katara heaved a shuddering breath. Pakku squeezed her hand again. "Think of how much you've learned."

"It wasn't a learning opportunity!"

"And you can give that knowledge to others."

Katara remembered her wish to marry medical arts with healing. She realized Pakku was right. Never would she want this, but at least she could make something out of it.

* * *

Azula was waiting for her on the docks. It had been three long week apart. She was still so thin, so pale, but she stood firm with her hand on a Dai Li guard's arm. She smiled and reached out to Katara, who carefully folded her into a hug. Katara couldn't stop her first shaking sobs, though she managed to control them. Azula's chest was thin in her arms; her breasts were small; but her grip on Katara was strong again.

Azula pulled back enough to kiss her gently. She tasted like mint. Katara just stood against her for a long few moments, listening to the clear, easy inhalations and exhalations. She wondered if Azula could speak or make any noise, but she didn't want to see Azula shake her head.

When they got back to the palace, Katara ignored a servant's request to take her bag and instead walked it to Azula's apartment and her bedroom. She was surprised when Azula's arms wrapped around her waist from behind. She was further surprised when Azula pushed her gently towards the bed.

"What are you—?"

Azula's eyes fluttered, and Katara realized she was touching herself. Katara sat down and watched the outline of Azula's hand working between her own legs. Azula withdrew her hand and rubbed those fingers against Katara's lips. She smelled and tasted Azula's spicy musk and took those fingers into her mouth, sucking and tracing over them with her tongue. Azula's eyes closed, and she settled against Katara's hip to rock against her.

Katara fumbled with her tunic, shoved aside her trousers, and found the heat and wetness she loved. Azula rocked against her hand, and she gasped through her nose and shivered only a moment later.

When she raised her head, she pinned Katara with a smoldering look.

Wow. Katara hadn't expected this. She gently rolled Azula over. "Keep going?" she asked.

Azula sent her a vaguely irritated look. She reached out to pull at Katara's tunic, and Katara shucked her clothes. She settled between Azula's legs, anticipated what Azula wanted, and turned her hips so that Azula could see her. Azula was breathing harder, but the breaths were clear.

Her fingers brushed over Katara's breasts and her sex, and… Katara seized one and brought it to her lips, then she leaned forward to kiss Azula. The feel of that mouth against hers and Azula's clever, wicked fingers working magic was enough. Katara was crying when she came, but she was so desperately happy, so relieved.

She shifted her body to Azula's apparent displeasure, and reached out to gently touch and feel. Azula cupped her face, and her breaths deepened and slowed. She was falling asleep.

"I love you," Katara told her.

Azula's hand tightened on hers, and she smiled. She opened her mouth, tried to speak, and winced. It was a thin noise, but it was definitely a vocalization. Katara settled into her arms crying. "That's great, baby. That's so good."

Finally, Katara dared believe that Azula could heal.


	21. Unlikely hero

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Azula's nephew is threatened by a snake. An unlikely hero emerges. Between Books 1 and 2.

The door to the council room thudded opened, and Azula jumped. The longwinded Minister of Finance had been droning on and on in a particularly sonorous cadence that had sent her dozing off. She focused momentarily on the vulgar picture Zuko had been drawing of the minister's bald head resembling male genitalia. Clever.

A servant rushed into the room and began to whisper furious in Zuko's ear. Azula was tempted to poke the man in the butt that he'd unceremoniously shoved into her personal space, but Zuko went pale at whatever he said. He asked, "Everything's fine?"

The servant nodded.

"Does Mai need me?"

The servant shook his head.

Zuko hesitated. Azula resigned herself to actually having to pay attention. "Go," she told him.

Four hours later, Azula imagined all of the demands she could make for having to sit through that meeting that had been about changing one word in a territorial bill that actually had no impact on its meaning. It was a stalling method that had worked for the day, despite Azula making her irritation known.

As she walked into her quarters, she handed Zuko's sketch to Kota. "Seal this and send it to the Minister of Finance."

Since no one approached her about news—she pointedly didn't ask why Zuko had left the council meeting—Azula changed into comfortable robes, accepted a cup of fruit juice, and walked out onto her balcony to enjoy the quiet she took for herself before supper. She was barefoot and regretted it when she stepped on something.

...Something cylindrical and scaly.

Azula looked down, saw the black and yellow diamond pattern of a viper, and acted on pure terrified instinct when she screamed and lurched back. Her cup of fruit juice went sailing over the balcony railing. Her scream became a: " _Fuck_!" Hopefully her little nephew wasn't in the gardens to hear that. Hopefully her mother wasn't either.

All of her servants were outside a second later. Two Dai Li agents leapt from the gardens below her to surround her protectively. Kota caught sight of the viper and gasped in horror. "Did it bite you?!"

Azula heaved a sigh, put a hand on her racing heart, and tried to regain her dignity. She picked up the viper's headless body and displayed it. Her voice was hoarse from her scream but she managed to say, "Unless vipers have venomous fangs in their backend, I doubt very highly I was bitten."

A happy meow echoed from a tree in Ursa's garden, and Tonk—no doubt the origin of this snake carcass—leapt gracefully onto the balcony railing. She positively preened as she jumped down to wind between Azula's legs. Azula ignored the fact that her Dai Li guards' lips were twitching. "Don't you have something better to be doing?" she asked them pointedly.

They bowed and jumped off the balcony in the same amount of time it took for her servants to find something else to occupy their time with. Azula sighed and tossed Tonkara's gruesome gift over the balcony.

Someone in the garden began to scream immediately. That someone was Ursa. Azula lurched to the balcony railing and looked over it to see her mother shrieking at the half of the viper's body on her shoulders.

"It's dead!" she shouted out of pure self-defense. She managed not to laugh and put on a contrite expression when Ursa thunderously strode into her apartment a few minutes later.

That took a bit of groveling. She was completely hoarse from her two shouts of the evening and had to stomach a swallow of opiate extract to apologize to her mother. That ended up earning sympathy points.

After that crisis was averted—partly by the two glasses of wine Ursa drank posthaste—Ursa explained there was more to it than Tonk deciding to feast on a venomous snake.

"Tozin found it."

Azula felt a twinge of pain in her belly at the thought of her baby nephew poking a viper. That must be why Zuko had excused himself early. Because no one had spoken to her of it, Azula knew her nephew hadn't been bitten. "Where was his nursemaid?"

"Screaming her silly head off. Guards were there, of course, but they wouldn't have gotten there in time. Your cat apparently got the viper's attention, killed it, and snatched it up for a snack."

Azula stroked Tonkara's soft head, and her cat purred smugly in her lap.

Ursa's expression went sour. "That nursemaid said your cat was, and I quote, 'The bravest little animal I've ever seen!'"

Azula pointed out, "She's certainly braver than you and I, since all we did was scream when we saw the remnants."

Ursa shuddered. "Don't remind me."

* * *

The next day, Zuko glowered at Azula when she stopped him in the palace hallways. Azula looked back at him pointedly. He said, "I'm not going to thank you for your bearded cat happening to want to eat the animal that threatened my kid."

"It was only your firstborn son, of course," Azula pointed out.

Zuko scowled.

Azula continued, "I'm not petty enough to want thanks for something my animal did anyway. I do expect you to stop complaining about cat hair on your robes."

Zuko continued to scowl.

"Oh." Azula continued on her way out to the royal stables for her blessedly free morning; she turned an airy wave to her brother. "I sent your little sketch to the Minister of Finance. Have fun at the meeting!"


	22. Common Ground

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The conversation Ursa and Katara must share to come to an understanding; Ursa reflects upon her family's history. Takes place during Book 2 after the assassination attempt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The timeline of ATLA is screwed up. This won't make sense if you do the math as birth years and ages of parents; I sat down and tried to make it work and it doesn't. (Unless you pretend there's another generation in Ursa's family--which I did--or you pretend a 72 year old woman can give birth.) Just go with it.

Ursa wanted to find Iroh and fall into his strong arms to weep. She waved Azula's servant over for a glass of good fire whiskey. Of course Azula never drank, and apparently Katara didn't drink whiskey so it took a few minutes before the snifter was delivered to her hand.

Katara sat across the settee from Ursa calmly. She looked far too calm for what had just happened. Maybe she didn't understand the implications of an assassination attempt against Azula.

Ursa took a long breath of the mint and acetone of the whiskey before she took a bigger swallow than she generally ever took. Today justified the liquor she usually avoided. The warm whiskey heated her throat and belly, and Ursa closed her eyes to find some inner calm.

What she saw on the back of her eyelids was the absolute stone-faced composure of Azula as she balanced her knife in one hand with her sleeve on fire, that fire peeling away the skin of her arm. It had seemed that she hadn't even felt it.

"Why did Ozai choose Azula?"

The question startled her more than Katara's voice. Ursa opened her eyes to regard the young woman sitting across from her. She was a pretty girl, soft and open. Ursa assumed… She didn't know what she thought, but seeing Azula obediently sit at Katara's command had stunned her. And now this girl asked a question that had so many implications, and she asked it without apology. Ursa sensed she wouldn't come out well in this conversation.

She took a sip of whiskey and breathed the hot scent of the alcohol after she swallowed. "The short answer is: I don't know. The long answer…"

Ursa focused on the candle-filled sconce on the wall. How did Azula feel to not be able to communicate with that flame anymore? As rusty and unpracticed as Ursa was, she could reach out and brush that flame like it was a part of her essence. She'd once hoped desperately that Azula would never find her firebending again. Now she wasn't as sure.

Not that her daughter had needed firebending to kill the two assassins. She was as proud of her vicious, unhesitating girl as she was surprised at herself for feeling that way.

She turned her mind to the question Katara had asked. The Water Tribe girl was still watching her silently, apparently patient for the answer, an answer which started several generations before Azula.

"Sozin was an odd man, as I'm sure you've guessed. He and Roku, my grandfather, were comrades. Friends even. Even though Sozin ultimately killed Roku, he loved him until he died. My family never lacked for anything at any point after Roku's death. On his deathbed, Sozin asked his only son, Azulon—Iroh and Ozai's father—to intermingle his line with Roku's."

"Why?" Katara asked.

Ursa swirled her whiskey and took another sip. "Maybe it was a way to give back in his mind: to be sure Roku's descendants shared the glory of being Fire Lord." She was being far too generous, but her family had always only seen Sozin's generosity and not his motivations. "Probably it was more about the supposed power of Roku's blood. His house, too, was of old, noble blood that always produced talented firebenders."

Even Ursa was talented. Had she ever applied herself to her lessons, she would have been exceptional.

Ursa took another sip of whiskey and finally felt its mellowing effects. "Azulon agreed to Sozin's request—as if he would ever refuse a father like his. He waited years before he married, and at that point, my grandmother was simply too old to bear children. The woman he chose, Ilah, was not from my family. I think he actually loved her, honestly. She was also a powerful, prestigious woman."

"Azula said she won three really big battles."

"One of those severely outnumbered and cut off from reinforcements," Ursa replied, thinking that, yes, Azula would have talked about her grandmother. She knew the woman more from books than her life, even though Ilah had died only a year before Azulon.

That gave her a familiar queer feeling. Azulon had always been kind to her, but for him to demand Ozai kill Zuko… She'd looked into his eyes as she pushed her fire-caressed steel blade into his heart. "You ordered my son's death. Find yours instead, old man," she'd murmured into his ear, watching as his eyes widened in pain and anger. Even if he hadn't meant it, surely he would know Ozai would carry out such an order. For that alone, she had no regrets.

"I don't think Azulon cared about the matter, but he kept up with my mother if only for the promise he made his father. She was too old for Iroh. I was too young for Iroh." If only it hadn't been so. Things could have been so much different. "Iroh married a woman from another noble house. The marriage was arranged with a family that was influentially but…dissenting to Azulon."

Of course, Katara was ignorant of such matters. She asked, "What?"

How lovely it must be to have no knowledge of the political twists and turns of the nobility and royalty of this nation. Ursa's time as a commoner wasn't to be envied, but she had been free of those concerns. "Marriage such as that is a double-edged sword. The family receives an immediate boost to its affluence and standing, aside from the fact that their bloodline will continue on as the Fire Lord or royalty." Ursa swirled her whiskey desolately. "But that family no longer can oppose the Fire Lord in any way. They're drawn close, too close to risk even a whisper of treason."

"Sounds like blackmail."

"You can be sure it was. As was Azulon's claim over my family. My parents knew from the moment I was born a girl that I would marry Ozai, the young boy prince."

Katara's expression showed distaste.

"He was a nice boy," she could admit, feeling the softening effects of her whiskey. She could picture wide-eyed, embarrassed Ozai who had blushed and stuttered at the sight of the girl who would be his future wife. "He was shy and clumsy, even when he tried so hard to emulate Iroh or Azulon. And Iroh…"

She could picture Iroh far more vividly than his younger brother. Even as a girl, she had been struck by him. He'd been so intense as a young man, or at least that was how she remembered him: bare-chested, sweating and muscled, completing kata after kata to execute the perfect technique without a hair out of place from his topknot or his thick, black beard. She'd been on the cusp of puberty and that image of his mid-twenties-self had shaped what she found attractive through her life. Seeing a gawky, childish, stuttering Ozai had been such a disappointment to her.

Alcohol loosened her tongue enough for her to admit, "Iroh was an intense man when he was young. Even then I used to wish…" She paused and sighed, remembering too what it had felt like as a teenage girl knowing the man she considered her ideal was married and had a son already.

"You loved Iroh then?" Katara asked her.

"I was too young to know what love was. I didn't know Iroh, but he was an attractive man. He always has been. I never dreamed he'd notice me, even when we were in-laws."

He had noticed her, but not the way she'd wanted at first. He'd been kind in the face of Ozai's unkindness. He'd been happy in the face of Ozai's unhappiness. Even after the death of his wife, he had remained gentle and thoughtful, always asking her how she was, if he could do anything for her. He'd been so good to Zuko, which meant more to her than his attention to her. That was when she'd truly fallen in love with him.

When Ozai left for his campaign to conquer some part of the Earth Kingdom—Ursa could hardly remember—in a desperate bid for the throne, Iroh had started seeing her more and more, looking at her longer and longer. Finally he had brushed his knuckles across her cheek and murmured her name, and it was the sign she'd wanted for a dozen years.

"He softened through the years, especially when I wanted a softer man than Ozai. And he noticed me."

Katara watched her without any apparent judgment. "You loved him when you had Azula?"

She had loved him, and she knew he had loved her. But she hadn't trusted him to take care of her. Ursa had trusted no one but herself at that point in her life. Iroh must have sensed that. Those last few times they'd shared together, she'd known she was pregnant with his child, and he had held her close against his body and murmured about traveling the world as a family, adopting Zuko as his son, of eloping… It had only cemented her determination to step away and protect herself and her children.

"It was the hardest thing I've ever had to do to turn him away…at least until I had to leave my children."

Iroh had drifted from her without much fuss, especially when Ozai returned. He'd turned his mind to other things, apparently content to treat her with formal aloofness once more, but he had never drawn away from Zuko. That alone made her love him more.

Iroh threw himself into accomplishing the goal his father set before him: conquer Ba Sing Se. She'd been shuttled from the Fire Nation long before he returned. Years later, having traveled from western Earth Kingdom all the way to Ba Sing Se, she would sometimes pause and turn to look over her shoulder at an aged man who reminded her of Iroh. Ursa wondered how many of those looks had actually been to the man who had stolen her heart so long ago.

Ursa came back to herself to see Katara watching her with plain pity on her face. She took a heavy sip of whiskey and recalled her former train of thought. Her voice had returned to its usual cadence. "But, anyway, Ozai and I only met a few times before our wedding day, and he changed a great deal in those years. Zuko… He reminded me of Ozai when he was a boy, and I knew what he could turn into if I didn't handle him gently. Ilah was not a pleasant woman. I hoped I could be better."

She had been better with Zuko, but Azula… Her daughter, her girl, a child born from Iroh, was still so very much like Ozai that it frightened Ursa. She had a disquieting thought more than once through Azula's childhood: _Is it from me?_

"I still don't understand why Ozai didn't love his son. Zuko tried so hard to please him; he wanted it so much. How could I let my boy think he wasn't loved? And then for some unfathomable reason, from the moment Azula was born Ozai wanted her."

"Why?" Katara asked simply.

It was a subject Ursa used to ponder and poke like a loose tooth. It led to pain too: _Where did I go wrong?_

"Ozai always hated Iroh for being firstborn. Maybe he told himself he would treat his second born the way he wished he had been treated." Even then, they had been so much different as babies. "Zuko was a quiet baby. Azula…" She smiled to think of her newborn girl, pink and tiny with a cap of black hair, her face crinkled in anger, giving gusty shriek after gusty shriek. "She screamed. And she screamed. And she screamed a bit more. She screamed for most of her first few months in fact."

Ursa shook her head to think of how many doctors and midwives she'd consulted. They'd suggested colic, but there had never been any evidence. The only time Azula had quieted was when she nursed. Oh, what a sweet little girl she'd been against Ursa's breast, though her bright eyes had flickered about constantly in curiosity.

"I did everything I could to make her happy, but nothing would stop her cries…except Ozai. He would pick her up, tell her that Princesses do not cry, and she'd just…" Ursa waved her hand, her eyes on the amber of her whiskey. "She'd quiet down, look up at him like he was the most interesting person she'd ever seen, and smile.

"Zuko was such a happy baby. Azula wasn't, even when she outgrew that phase. And as a toddler… She had to do everything for herself. She screamed if I tried to help her with anything. She was mischievous from the start, but not like Zuko. She was sneaky and she lied. When she didn't lie, she pushed. It was like she had this compulsion to say 'no' to everything, no matter what. I couldn't break her of it. I couldn't punish her because she didn't care."

She didn't seem to mind if Ursa spanked her. If Ursa forbade her going outside, Azula would find a book with pictures or a firebending scroll to peruse. If Ursa took away her reading, she'd go outdoors. When Ursa finally resorted to locking Azula in her room, Azula picked the lock and snuck away, often until nightfall despite the dozens of servants sent out to find her. Ursa still shuddered to think of all the places her young daughter had wandered to in the noble district.

"The thing I remember most from her childhood… We have a fourth year celebration for our children." Ursa concentrated on her whiskey snifter. "It fell just before Zuko turned five. Ozai wouldn't come, though it's the father's duty to take his son that year. I told Zuko it was a private mother-son celebration, but he was still disappointed. We were gone for one night and most of the next day.

"When I came home, I checked on Azula. She was in bed, and her diaper was dirty. Ozai had dismissed all the servants that day for some asinine reason, so I can't imagine how long she was in that diaper. She had a horrible rash for weeks after that." Ursa took another soothing sip of whiskey. She rested the snifter against her cheek and focused on her memories.

"I told her, 'Don't you want Mommy to change your diaper?' She looked at me, a little one just about to turn three, and said, 'I don't want you. I want Daddy.'"

The pain she had felt in that moment was still sharp in her memory.

"So that makes it okay to emotionally abandon your child?" Katara asked in evident anger.

Ursa lifted her head in shock. She'd almost forgotten Katara was there, and now her defensiveness was sluggish to rise. "How dare you—"

Katara's face had flushed, and her hands shook with her anger. "How dare _you_. She was just a baby! I don't care if she told you she hated you, you never stop loving a child or turn away from one. No wonder she fixated on Ozai! Because you threw her away because she said something that hurt your feelings as a _baby_! You were a bigger baby than she was, and she was a toddler!"

"Don't presume to know my mind! That was only one case of many," Ursa snapped—feeling shame despite herself—angry with herself for the betraying tears that rose to her eyes. She set down her whiskey, angry at it too for making her soft. "Do you think I don't blame myself every day thinking of the abuse I must have missed? I was so stupid. I was so fixated on myself and Zuko that I forgot to protect my own little girl."

"It took three years before Azula stopped flinching every time I touched her," Katara said, her eyes bright blue with her anger. "Three years. When she dreams, she tells me she has to be perfect or Daddy will be unhappy. What do you think Ozai did to her to make her feel that way?"

"I didn't know he was violent," Ursa said. It was the truth. She knew it was the truth. She'd been blindsided at her first sight of Zuko's face. She'd been horrified when she'd noticed Azula's small but numerous scars. "I didn't know."

"How couldn't you? You lived with him for years!"

"We shared an apartment," Ursa corrected. "We lived in different rooms in that apartment." Rarely did Ozai even approach her for sex, though she had known he frequented Muma. She hadn't cared as long as he took precautions to ward against impregnating his purchases and bringing back a sexual disease. She told him at the beginning of their marriage if he gave her a venereal disease, she would cut his prick off. She'd meant it, and he'd known that. "We didn't share each other's life."

"Is that why you hate me so much?" Katara asked her in a strange tangent. "Because Azula and I have something you never did?"

Disgusting. Ursa leveled a glare at Katara, who didn't seem cowed. "I do have it," she said first. "And I want my children to have that happiness. But I certainly don't trust _you_ to bring that to Azula."

Katara's jaw slackened. "What?" she asked.

"All I see is Azula giving herself to you. You give her a few paltry months out of the year, and she waits for you faithfully instead of finding someone here who can give her a marriage and a life together. She has no _future_ with you, but she's the only one who doesn't see that."

The Water Tribe girl winced and her jaw tightened.

"Who knows if you have a husband or wife down there, and you only use Azula as a…sexual diversion and a way to see the Fire Nation when you need a vacation. I see absolutely no evidence to the contrary."

Katara's brow tightened, and her chin lifted again. "I love her, and I don't answer to you. The South Pole is my home. That doesn't mean Azula and I don't have a future. Just because we have separate lives doesn't mean we don't love each other."

"And the Fire Nation is Azula's. But she's a _princess_ of her nation. She's completely ruined her reputation with you. She receives constant criticism because of her relationship with you. She's bound herself to you legally, and I see absolutely nothing that you've given her in return."

"I don't have money. I don't have Fire Nation standing. But I can give her my love," Katara said sharply. "Something I don't think she's ever been given before. I love her, and I tell her that every day. I make her happy. Honestly, I don't care about you or what you think of me, but because I'm in this for life, we have to figure out some way to get along."

For life, Katara said. Ursa remembered Azula's ultimatum earlier that day. It felt like years had passed since that morning, but her daughter's sharp demand was fresh in her mind. _'Treat Katara as family because she is.'_

Ursa looked at Katara, saw the girl that Azula turned to instead of her own mother, and burst into tears. She'd lost so much time with her girl, starting far before she'd been banished to the Earth Kingdom. And before she could stake that place in her daughter's heart, this waterbender had made the claim. She was so afraid that what tenuous hold she had over Azula was going to slip away again. She was afraid that Azula would leave her behind to go to the South Pole and never come back.

"I don't want to lose her!" Ursa gasped.

Katara folded her into a hug, and Ursa found she had no desire to fight the embrace. She sobbed against Katara's shoulder, overwhelmed and exhausted and so worried. "How can I make it right with her? How can I make her love me?"

Katara's hug was comfortingly tight. "She does love you, Ursa. She always has. She just has weird ways of showing it." Katara squeezed her tighter for a moment. "Just because she loves me doesn't mean she'll stop loving you. Okay?"

Ursa's sobs eased to shuddering gasps, and she gained control of herself after a few minutes. She wiped her face with the handkerchief Katara supplied her. Katara released the handkerchief as she said, "I'm not your enemy."

Ursa gave a weak nod, too exhausted to fight this. "I know you make her happy."

Katara did something very kind then. She reached out, took Ursa's hand, and said, "You make her happy too."


	23. All's well that ends well

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Edited MES to hopefully be a it more believable regarding Aang's actions. I wanted to polish this up too. Aang's course of events through MES.

* * *

**First: The failed proposal**

"You want to tell my why you decided lesbians don't exist?"

Aang wanted to sink through the world, bury his head in the bay until it froze off, anything to forget what had happened. "I didn't really mean it… I just thought about, you know…"

"Penis and vagina equal sex?" Sokka asked him dryly.

He'd sounded like an egotistical chauvinistic jerk. Aang hadn't meant women couldn't be together, but it had come out all wrong. But hearing Katara say that she was with Azula of all people... He should have said, _'Do you remember what she did to me during the war?'_ or anything other than what he'd said. Instead, he'd been an idiot, and Katara had made him feel ten centimeters tall. Or Azula had.

He wasn't sure who he was madder with: Azula, Katara, or himself.

"I told you not to ask her," Sokka told him not unkindly.

"I know," Aang groaned. "But I was happy to see her, and she smiled at me—"

"She was smiling at everyone," Sokka said dryly.

Had been but wasn't smiling anymore. Aang's anger simmered hot again as he realized he'd come off as the bad guy in this situation. It wasn't fair, not when Azula was the other person. If only he'd said that Azula almost killed him or tried to kill Katara… But no, he'd opened his mouth and said something that made him squirm in embarrassment to remember. It made him sound so juvenile and ignorant.

"Give her a few weeks."

Aang nodded miserably. He needed a few weeks too. He'd known even as he proposed again that he was making a mistake, but he hadn't expected Katara to get angry. The fact she'd been seeing someone else shocked him. But Azula of all people… She'd come as close as anyone to killing him. That Katara could overlook it felt like a betrayal. He'd wanted to belittle Azula, but he'd only belittled himself.

Then Katara had said that Azula was one-hundred times better…

And now that he thought about it, it stunk of Azula seducing Katara. Of course! That was why; everything made sense now. He stood up to go to Appa, fly to the Fire Nation, and have it out with Azula. How dare she corrupt Katara like this?

"I have to go—"

Sokka grabbed his arm and halted his progress. "Whoa. Hold on. Go where?"

Aang turned around. "To Azula. We both should go. We should go see—"

"Aang, I don't think that's a good idea."

"I told Zuko it was stupid to let her out of prison—"

"Seriously, Aang."

"She went and seduced Katara—"

Sokka shook him and got his attention. "We need to leave this alone. Katara says that Azula cares about her. Think about it: even if she's wrong, if you go charging in to confront her girlfriend, who do you think's going to be in trouble? _You_ are, not Azula. You're already in enough shit as it is."

Aang deflated as he considered what Sokka had said. He was probably right. An apology was going to be necessary. Azula was bound to do something awful at some point anyway. Then Katara would break up with her, and he'd have a chance to make things right with Katara.

"I'm going to do you a favor and not repeat what you said to the Kyoshi Warriors," Sokka said after he dropped Aang's arm. He started to grin. "You think Kyoshi is going to start haunting your spiritual meditations?"

Aang groaned again in pure dread.

* * *

**Second: The night after Zuko's wedding**

"I told you so," Aang wanted to say after that whole ridiculous debacle at Zuko's wedding. This is what Katara got for choosing Azula as her girlfriend—going so far as to legally bind herself to her here in the Fire Nation. That had made him so angry to find out. Azula didn't even have the decency to marry Katara. Instead Katara was just a consort, whatever that meant. It sounded a lot like a nice way to say 'concubine' to him.

Did Katara see it for what it was? No. She told Sokka it was romantic and that Azula had done it for her. He'd held his tongue about Azula admitting to sleeping with that other woman because he didn't want to hurt Katara by bringing it up. Azula had said Katara knew, which made no sense, but... He'd been afraid to say anything. He might now though.

Seeing Azula draw her knife during the wedding, hearing her agree to face a man in Agni Kai, and seeing Katara so upset by what had happened during the after-party had been a twisted sort of retribution. Except he felt like crap for being so vindictive. He wanted Katara to break up with Azula, but he didn't want Katara to get hurt.

What else could Katara expect though? Azula wasn't going to change. She was still dangerous, even if she'd decided for some reason to support Zuko. She was going to fight a man to the death tomorrow for no reason whatsoever. She was cheating on Katara and flaunting it.

Aang had met a lot of different people through the years, but Azula was the only one who completely escaped his understanding. Didn't she see what kind of a blessing she had with Katara? Apparently not if she was so quick to break Katara's heart like this.

He sat in his room after they got back to the palace after the wedding and waited for Katara. He imagined Katara coming to him, needing a strong shoulder for her head. He would be the supportive friend, comfort her, and gently say, "Don't you see that's the way Azula is?"

That was where his imagination betrayed him because after that, Katara would kiss him and they'd be together again. He promised himself he wouldn't be thinking about that when she came to him for comfort. He wouldn't hope it could finally rekindle their relationship. It wasn't fair to Katara.

So Aang waited. And he waited a little longer. Then he realized that Katara wasn't going to come to him at all.

He found her in Sokka's room. Suki had an arm around Katara's shoulders, and Katara stared listlessly out of the window. Her eyes were red like she'd been crying. Sokka sat across from Katara, and he was talking about otter penguins for some reason.

Suki and Sokka glanced at Aang neutrally. Katara took one look at him, and her jaw clenched like she was getting defensive. He hadn't even said anything, and she assumed he was going to be a jerk. That made him madder than the fact she hadn't come to him at all, even madder than Azula's arrogance and the fact she'd hurt Katara.

Maybe what he did next was out of that anger. When Sokka began to rehash the situation in a way that sounded way too generous to Azula, Aang blurted, "She was with that woman earlier, the one she was walking with during the wedding. They walked into the palace together. She said they were sleeping together."

Katara's eyes went wide and filled with tears. She looked at him like he'd broken her heart.

He felt ten centimeters tall again. He wasn't sure he ever regretted saying something that much. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean—"

Katara got up and walked into the other room without a word. Sokka hastened to follow. Suki, who was usually on Aang's side about all things Azula, pinned Aang with a glare. "Great way to kick her while she's down."

And yet again he'd opened his mouth and became the bad guy when Azula was the one at fault. Maybe he only had himself to blame, he thought as he watched Katara enter Azula's apartment the next afternoon. Or maybe she just loved Azula that much. Aang was beginning to realize he didn't have much choice in that.

He wondered how many times he would have to apologize for Katara to forgive him this time.

* * *

**Third: The dragon debacle**

This was Aang's favorite part of his job: the days that he got to see the fruits of his labor. This little town hadn't had running water so Aang dropped in and asked a few friends to help him out. They split bamboo shafts and built a little pipeline of water from the fresh mountain stream about ten kilometers away. Now the town's residents wouldn't have to walk that far or use the brackish water from the river that dumped into the sea nearby.

This job wasn't putting down a malevolent spirit or teaching the art of bending or stopping a war from breaking out, but it was just as important to him. Zuko wanted Aang in Republic City to oversee its foundation, but Aang couldn't forsake these jobs. They were what he loved most about being the Avatar.

Aang loved the little kids too. A lot of these children had been born after the war ended, and he loved that they didn't know anything about the horrors of it. Aang would do everything he could to make sure they never had to experience what his people had. During their day of rest, he enjoyed showing the kids some airbending tricks and participated in a little foot-ball game.

Fafa, the elder of this little settlement, asked him if he had any kids.

It was something he'd been so sure about early in his life, but now Aang wasn't sure children were in the cards for him. He definitely wanted them, but the situation just wasn't right for him…at least right now. Maybe in the future if he found someone who wanted to have a family, he would get his wish.

"Not yet," he said.

Momo landed on his shoulder and started chattering. Fafa glanced around Aang in surprise so he turned.

At first he thought she was a Water Tribe woman. He saw the braids in her hair before he registered her face. Even seeing those sharp golden eyes didn't entirely convince Aang. It was the first time he'd seen her without makeup. The planes of her face were softer, her eyes weren't as bright, and her mouth wasn't as defined. She looked like Zuko.

Aang's eyes flicked down, and he saw the betrothal necklace around her neck. She didn't wear it like a choker; maybe her scar bothered her if she did. The emblem rested where her clavicles met. It was a flick of blue fire. There was no more doubt.

This was Azula. And Katara had made her a betrothal necklace.

He wasn't sure what he felt in that moment, but whatever that emotion, it was ugly.

Aang prided himself in having come a long away about how he felt about Katara being with Azula. He'd determined to leave it all alone; Katara could deal with whatever repercussions her relationship might have. But this… It felt a lot like their relationship was being rubbed in his face.

Azula looked away. She looked away from him like she _pitied_ him. And then she asked for his help.

His help, after everything... When he asked her why, Aang was startled at the tone of his own voice, but he didn't have a chance to think about that when Azula answered him.

Katara wanted Aang to help Azula, as a favor to her.

Apparently Katara expected him to drop everything to help the woman who'd stolen her away from him, who had almost killed him during the war, who was probably having an affair with some Fire Nation woman. Great, he thought bitterly. He was a nice guy, right? Nice guys let their ex-girlfriend walk all over them. Nice guys pretended to be okay with their ex-girlfriend's girlfriend—crap, her wife. Being a nice guy felt like crap.

If he didn't help her, he could kiss his friendship with Katara goodbye.

So Aang nodded, led Azula to Appa, and pointed them in the direction of the Sun Warrior's island.

If it didn't work, Katara would just have one more thing to be mad at him about.

He knew it wasn't a fair thought, but he thought it anyway. They'd established a rocky if not entirely happy relationship the last few years. Their happiness revolved around Aang pretending Azula didn't exist. Even if he tried to be positive, Katara now automatically assumed he was trying to be a jerk. Then she got mad at him for not being supportive.

And now she'd asked him to help Azula, for her. Azula, her wife.

He couldn't believe it. After all the hoops he'd jumped through to try to make her happy and keep her close back when they were together, Katara had flat out dumped him anyway…and all Azula had to do was go to the South Pole once and Katara married her. Just like that. It was ridiculous and unfair that Katara would so readily throw her life away on someone who would never treat her right.

His desire to be with Katara romantically had faded away a long time ago. Aang had given up on Katara as a lover—funny enough, he wasn't even attracted to her anymore—but the injustice of this whole situation was too much. What made the difference? What made this woman who was so awful, who would probably never marry Katara in the Fire Nation, would never give up her home to be with Katara in the South Pole, would never give her children, so attractive to Katara? What was it about her that Aang never had?

The thing that burned him up the most was that Azula didn't have a clue how lucky she was. She had no idea what Katara had put up with for years in the Fire Nation. Azula probably took her for granted every day.

And Katara just sent Azula to him to fix her firebending. Like that was a great idea. Like Aang even wanted to. What happened to asking nicely? What happened to writing a letter to ask if he was okay with this in the first place?

After a few hours of stewing on his anger, he realized that Azula hadn't exactly been rude or rubbed anything in his face when she'd asked for his help. Katara claimed she'd been lying about having an affair, and she had suffered a lot after Ozai's betrayal. He felt his anger slowly ebb away. Maybe this would be a good opportunity to talk to her about peace, family, and finding some common ground. Azula was a person just like everyone else in the world, right?

Maybe they could find a way to be friends, which would definitely make Katara happy.

When they finally touched down on the island, Aang turned to finally break the silence. Azula looked at him with a sneer and a curl of her her mouth, as if he was a bug beneath her boot. "I don't need _your_ help."

All that anger rushed back. Of course she didn't want his help. She had no idea what she'd be facing on this island, and she dismissed him just like that. Azula took off her betrothal necklace. She just took it off, like it was nothing. Katara had probably worked on that for months, and Azula just took it off—

She met his eyes, handed him her bag, and said, "Keep these safe for me."

He had to be the good guy, the best friend, despite being dismissed and turned away. Of course she didn't want help; she was Azula. He'd basically been used as a courier service. If she didn't want his help then so be it.

He left her there.

Aang ignored his pangs of worry and guilt for some of his journey back. And then he really thought about the situation he'd left her in. She told him to go, but that was before he'd had a chance to say anything about the dragons. Azula couldn't firebend. She didn't know about the booby traps or the Sun Warriors or what the dragons really wanted. She'd never learned the dancing dragon form. He'd left her on that island and she couldn't… The Sun Warriors would help her right? Crap. They'd wanted to kill Aang and Zuko. Aang had to stop Zuko from doing something stupid when they'd faced Ran and Shaw. Azula would never do the dancing dragon form. If she didn't, they'd eat her.

Aang yanked Appa around, and Appa groaned in protest. Aang hurried him on, despite Appa's sure exhaustion. If he didn't get there in time… The journey away from the island was short, but the journey back was horribly long. At least a day had passed since he'd left Azula there. Aang's fear sat in a ball of ice in his belly, and he broke out into a nervous sweat. He had hope though. He and Zuko had been on the island overnight before they'd seen Ran and Shaw.

When they landed on the beach again, Aang knew he was too late.

The beach was destroyed by what was clearly a firebending battle. A massive impression in the dunes betrayed a dragon had taken part. Oh, no no no no.

"Azula!" he shouted in terror. Aang used airbending to jet himself up the beach. "Azula!" he cried out again.

There was no Azula. There were no dragons. He searched the entire island from top to bottom frantically, and there were also no Sun Warriors. The temple looked half-destroyed, and he realized with growing horror that he'd killed Azula. He should have insisted he'd come or followed behind her in secret or warned her about everything.

Aang sank down on the beach and cried into his hands. He felt lightheaded from hyperventilating. He'd killed her because he'd been mad at Katara. Azula hadn't deserved that. He was the Avatar; he was supposed to help everyone, not just the people he liked. And Azula…she must have been eaten. That would be so horrifying, and he'd done it to her.

Momo chattered on his shoulder, but Aang couldn't even raise a hand to comfort his lemur. He staggered to his feet and dug a grave in the sand. For long minutes he held Azula's bag over the grave before he realized dully that firebenders were cremated. Aang pulled the bag back and stared at it. He could burn her things. Would that be enough?

And then he realized he had to tell Katara. Katara would want Azula's things.

Oh no…

In that moment of crushing shame and guilt, he wanted to die. He wanted to trade places with Azula just for that. He'd killed her, and Katara had lost her wife, and he was no better than Ozai. Zuko and Iroh and Ursa would be so upset. Why hadn't he just been the better man?

Aang didn't hurry Appa back. He didn't feel much of anything as he landed back at the town he'd been helping much later than he'd promised. He had to gather himself to figure out how he could tell Katara what he'd done. He couldn't sleep, his hand shook too much to shave, and words played in his head over and over: "I'm so sorry." His brain supplied lies about what had happened, but he knew he couldn't. He had to tell Katara the truth for everyone's sake. He wanted to go immediately, but Appa needed a few days of rest before they could make the trip to the South Pole. All the while, Aang only wanted to throw himself at Katara's feet and beg for forgiveness.

When he finally landed in the South Pole and witnessed Katara's quiet smile of greeting, Aang finally said the words he'd been rehearsing. "I'm so sorry, Katara." He held out Azula's betrothal necklace with tears in his eyes and waited for Katara's sorrow.

Katara's expression shifted and tightened."Sorry? For what?"

And then a voice he'd never expected to hear again said, "What were you going to say, Avatar? That _you_ killed me? Or that I bullied you into leaving me on that island? What a pleasure to see you again. How is the beautiful Lady Fafa?"

Azula was stood only a few meters away, and she was wearing a parka. She was here. She was alive. He was so stunned by her presence that he couldn't find words at all.

Part of him wanted to fall to his knees and cry in relief. Part of him was in utter disbelief. Part of him didn't trust her at all. His mind played the reality of this over and over. He could hardly understand it. Unless Azula had… Had she _killed_ Ran and Shaw? In the back of his mind, he remembered Zuko's bitter words: 'Of course she did.' Did she know what she'd done?

"Azula," Katara said sharply. Azula ignored her and opened one hand. "I would like my belongings returned."

"I thought you were dead," he admitted, his voice shaking.

"Dead?" Katara echoed in abrupt anger.

"Then…you can bend," he heard himself say from far away.

He'd mourned her. He'd dug her a grave. He was going to tell Katara the truth about what had happened, and _she was already here_. And after feeling like absolute crap for almost a week, Aang's swing in emotion went to anger. He was defensive when Azula turned bare aggression on him and said, "Thanks to you. Or no thanks to you. No doubt the majority of the damage you witnessed on that island was from me."

No, not the dragons. Not the last dragons. "Ran and Shaw—"

"Dead," she said flatly.

Horror on top of horror. Did she know that she'd just destroyed a piece of the legacy of the Fire Nation? How ignorant was this woman who had so much and destroyed most of it? She would do the same thing to Katara if given the chance. "You don't deserve her!"

Azula sneered at him. It was like they were back in the war again with that look of poisonous pleasure she'd turned on Sokka when she'd talked about Suki. She said, "Yes, I'm sure. Clearly I'm the evil Fire Nation Princess, and I use Katara as my waterbending concubine. I must have seduced her, and I keep her as a trophy for my bed. She will never be allowed to leave the Fire Nation, and I will bear heirs from strong firebending Fire Nation noblemen while Katara serves me in the bedroom."

He was stunned that she would be so cruel to say that in front of Katara. Every one of his fears was confirmed.

"Is that what you really believe?" Azula continued. "For someone who touts Katara as much as you do, you don't seem to think she's good enough to be my wife."

He was really angry now. How dare she imply that—"That's not what I said!" He shouted out the thoughts that had been on his mind the entire trip to the Sun Warrior's island: "It took you ten years to come here! Ten years Katara waited for you to see her home and meet her family, and even though you made her wait that long she still married you! And you'll probably never come back here again!"

Azula didn't frown and she didn't rebuff him. Certainly Aang hadn't cowed her with that statement. Then she smiled so cruelly and said, "The pathetic thing to me, Avatar, is that you pine over a woman who would never have loved you even if I didn't exist."

Aang wasn't quite sure what happened next, but he was chasing Azula across the tundra. He wanted to hurt her just like she'd hurt him. He wanted to put her in her place. How dare she say that to him and make it sound like he was only doing this out of jealousy? He loved Katara, he wanted her to be happy, and Azula was never going to treat her right. Never!

She spun and punched fire at him, and he pushed it away with a breath of wind. Aang didn't know what he was doing as he yanked ice into his hands and shot it towards Azula.

She wrapped her fire around her. He was partly blinded by the intensity of her flame, and when his vision cleared, the darkness left behind wasn't from her fire. There was a dragon there, facing him, and it screamed.

A dragon in the South Pole.

He stopped and stared in disbelief. That dragon twisted its body and shot lightning at him.

Pure instinct made him draw it into his core and pass it away like water. As soon as he let it go, he realized where he'd directed it: to Azula.

He shrank into himself in terror even as the last bit of static dispersed from him. He'd just killed her, even more so than when he'd left her on the island. He had the chance to make it all right again, and now in his rage he'd just made a choice that terrified him.

He thought he was better than this. He thought he wasn't ruled by his anger.

Oblivious to his internal struggle, Azula simply caught the lightning and sent it away.

She could redirect lightning.

All of Aang's worry was once again wasted. What redoubled was anger in its stead. Why did he waste guilt on this awful woman? Why could she do everything right? He launched an earthbending attack at her as the dragon flew away, and she simply dodged and kicked a whip of flame at him.

Azula's sheer power took him off guard. Aang staggered only to get blasted with another push, and another. Aang found himself on his back. How had this happened? She hadn't been able to firebend since the war, and after only a few days firebending again, she'd thrown him to the ground?! He was better than this, but he hadn't expected her strength. Now she showed him up once again.

She grinned as she looked at him. Aang knew what that evil look meant: Azula was going to try to kill him. He yanked the ice and earth around him, and in the rush of what happened next he took the Avatar state in self-defense.

He sensed Katara was approaching, but when he ascended to the air, all Aang saw was the damage Azula had done to the tundra. For some reason she hadn't killed him, but she could have. That kind of threat had to be stopped. He had no second thoughts as he decided what he would do next.

Her chest was warm through the soft wool against his thumb. This close, she radiated heat. Azula looked at him and fell to her knees. Maybe in another time, another place, he could find satisfaction by the fact she looked at him in terror. Maybe he would be horrified at himself. Right now he felt nothing. Aang reached out to touch her forehead and—

His hand wouldn't obey him. It jerked backwards, his wrist twisted, and his entire arm seized up. His body followed. It was a horrible sensation: the blood in his body didn't want to pump, and all of his muscles were bunched in a twisted cramping sensation. He'd felt this before, and he understood.

There was only one waterbender in the world who was strong enough to control him in the Avatar state. Katara was bloodbending him.

Aang didn't resist Katara as he replayed his memory of what had just happened. In his growing horror, he didn't even realize Katara had released him. He'd just… He'd just attacked Azula unprovoked, and he'd tried to strip her bending. Who was he? Who had he turned into?

There was no surviving this. Not when Katara pulled Azula into her arms, not when he realized Azula stopped her attack because Katara had told her to. He was the bad guy. He was in the wrong, despite his best intentions.

Aang was too shocked to even cry.

"Katara," he called. She just walked away from him.

This wasn't the person he was supposed to be. This wasn't what he'd meant to happen. Everyone would hate him for this, and they should. He felt empty and abused. The worst part was, this was all his own fault.

When Aang finally walked back to the village, the only person to greet him was Katara's grandmother. Gran Gran watched him for a long moment and turned her shoulder to him. He took her unspoken command to follow her.

The next thing he knew, he was sitting in big wooden building. This was new. It was comfortable and warm. All Aang wanted was to stir up the fire and step into it.

"We constructed this for their wedding," Gran Gran said quietly. "Do you know what Azula said to Katara?"

Aang owed it to the woman to meet her eyes as she continued.

"She said she was glad she'd lost the war if only to have the chance to be with Katara."

Somehow he felt even worse. After everything he'd assumed… Had he only seen what he wanted to see? Why did Azula tell him all those awful lies if she really loved Katara? Gran Gran placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. "You have to speak to them."

"I know," Aang said weakly.

"Stay here, Aang, and I'll bring them to you."

What could he say? What could he do? He remembered that frozen look of terror on Azula's face and felt like a monster.

When Azula and Katara walked into the building, he knew who he had to apologize to first. He bowed to Azula and apologized. He meant it with every fiber of his being. Then, in desperation, he asked, "Why do you keep making me angry on purpose?"

Azula met his eyes, finally without a sneer or scowl. "Because I hate being afraid, and I'm afraid of you."

It was maybe the last thing in the world he expected to hear. Katara's face opened in shock too. What was there to be afraid of? And then he remembered Azula's face as he hovered over her.

Azula confirmed her fear of his energy bending in her next statement. That she would chastise him for taking Ozai's bending away was oddly characteristic. After Ozai had tried to kill her, she still defended him. If she wanted Aang to apologize for taking Ozai's bending away, she was going to be disappointed. In his present frame of mind, Aang couldn't even think of any defense even though he and Zuko had long talks about the situation. He wouldn't lie, but he needed Azula to understand.

"I wouldn't change what I did to Ozai. I am, though, deeply sorry about what I tried to do to you. There's a time and a place for energybending, but that wasn't it."

She met his eyes evenly and said, "You should be. You put yourself in a situation that had two possible results: you would strip my bending, or you would be stripped of your own."

She'd known? How had she known?

Whatever expression was on his face apparently made her smile, but it wasn't a cruel smile. Azula still looked a little shaken. "Toph Bei Fong and I regularly correspond. She seems to think that if you attempt to energybend without a pure spirit, you lose everything. Earlier, when you fought me in anger and jealousy, was your heart pure?"

The word 'jealousy' was just too simple. What was the point trying to excuse what he did anyway? She was right. He hadn't been pure when he reached to take her bending away; he'd done it out of fear of her strength, maybe partly from all of the anger that had fueled him to strike out at her in the first place. Maybe it would have been fitting for Aang to lose his right to be the Avatar after what he'd done.

Aang dared to look at Katara as he said, "No. You could be right. Katara, thank you for stopping me."

Katara didn't look at him. He'd never seen her this angry. There was no fixing this. Not that he had any right to hope she would ever talk to him again, much less be his friend.

Azula caught his attention again. "You hold a power that is devastating and horrifying, Avatar Aang. You are not above reproach. You are not above our laws. I am bound to protect the people of my nation. And I can beat you."

Maybe she could. On the same hand, Aang couldn't assume that she would use her strength to kill him. What anger her arrogance provoked was overshadowed by his deep regret. She was right; he'd abused his power the moment he'd decided to strip her bending. Aang nodded to Azula to show her he respected her words. "Noted."

Aang looked back at Katara. He wanted to explain, but he wasn't sure he had the right to do that at all. "Please, Katara, I'm so sorry."

"You were my friend," Katara finally said. Her expression, her words, and her sadness made Aang feel ten centimeters tall again. She continued, "Why couldn't you just be happy for me? Is it that hard? Can't you just give up on me?!"

He _had_ given up on her. He just wanted her to be happy. Aang realized he'd been so twisted up with his bitterness towards Azula that he'd been selfish in how he thought it could happen."I just want what's best for you, Katara."

"Azula _is._ She loves me. She's my wife, Aang. I love her, and I will always choose her. I can't forgive you for this. Not only did you leave her alone on a dangerous island, you didn't give her any information about what she would face. You used lightning against her, and you tried to energybend her!"

"I thought she was going to kill me!" he defended. "She said she killed the dragons, and all the things she's said about sleeping with other women and liking you for your body—"

"And _you!"_ Katara turned her anger on Azula, who visibly flinched. "Stop it! I don't care if Aang makes you piss your pants; stop provoking him!" She turned back to Aang. "She calls me 'darling', sends my family gifts here, visited me when I asked her, will marry me back in the Fire Nation despite all the hassle because I want it. She's adopting Ana as her child. She loves me; she's lying to you to make you angry. Trust _me._ Would I ever tolerate all those things you say she's said?"

What a different picture than the one he'd imagined. And she was right. She'd wouldn't tolerate that kind of behavior. Katara raised her eyebrows when she saw his look of understanding. She abruptly pointed at him and turned that sharp look to Azula. "This man is the gentlest person I've ever known. He once nursed a baby cat owl to healthy by hand-feeding it for three weeks. He always offers help when he's asked, and he has never met a person he doesn't like. He's always been there for me, and all he wants if for everyone in this world to be safe and happy.

"I love you both so much, and it hurts me that you can't find a way to at least tolerate each other. Every fight, every lie, every time you insult each other, you're hurting _me."_

He was cowed. When Katara pointed at the rug and said, "Both of you sit down and hold hands", he obeyed. Azula took a second look, and she sat too. They stared at each others' hands for a moment before grasping each other.

This was awkward. Azula's palm was warm. She was radiated heat, and she slumped sideways to heave an unhappy sigh at their situation. Aang was too cowed to mimic her.

Katara just watched them for a moment. She put her hands on her hips. "Now talk to each other. I'm leaving. No one comes out of this hut for fifteen minutes. Do you understand?"

"Yes," Aang said.

As soon as Katara left, they let go and scooted away from each other. Aang was too embarrassed to speak. What would he say? Finally, Azula said, "I lie. I get angry and I lash out. So remember this truth even if I'm saying something else: Katara is unique. She's singular. There is no one else in this world like her, and I know how lucky I am that she's chosen me to share her life with. But I didn't steal her from you. She left you before she ever entertained the thought of being with me, and there's no one you can blame for that, not even yourself."

He had nothing to say to that, but he filed those words away. In his prejudice, he had allowed her to blind him to her true nature. Azula continued, "Katara is also the most forgiving person I know. I was her enemy…all of your enemies during the war, and yet now I'm her wife."

Was it another smart? "You don't have to rub it in."

Azula rolled her eyes at him and waved her hand. "Your lack of comprehension skills astounds me. Listen to what I mean, not the words I'm saying. I'm trying to tell you that if she can forgive me that, she can forgive you this. If she's making us sit together and hold hands, surely she means to forgive you."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Certainly not because I spare a thought towards you, especially after your pathetic attempts against me. But she loves you as her friend, and she won't forgive herself for all of this until she forgives you." She looked him in the eye as her face hardened. "Make no mistake, Aang. If you ever make an attempt on my life or my firebending again, I will feed you to my dragon."

His eyes widened, and he was momentarily diverted. He remembered her claim about killing Ran and Shaw. He hoped so much that she'd been lying about that too. "How did that happen? Where did it come from? And Ran and Shaw…?"

She gave an honest smile and was abruptly very beautiful. "Ran and Shaw's last surviving offspring. We did a little battle, and she's my dragon now. I never saw the other two."

Aang felt the pressure release from his chest. He owed her an explanation too. "So _that_ was what I saw. I was so angry when I took you to the Sun Warrior's island. The betrothal necklace and then after I made the whole trip, you didn't want my help at all. I didn't think you'd actually be in danger, but... I made it all the way back to the Earth Kingdom, and then I realized I couldn't just leave you. So I went back. I thought you were dead—the beach was completely destroyed, and the Sun Warriors weren't there. I thought I'd killed you. I didn't know what to do. I went back to the Earth Kingdom to work for a few days, but I knew I'd have to tell Katara."

He said, "I feel so awful for what I did."

Azula did the last thing he expected: she laughed at him. "Get over yourself."

Azula rolled her eyes haughtily. "Shall we go over a list of your supposed sins? First, you took me to a place I asked you to take me to and you left me when I asked you to. If you wanted me dead you should have just dropped me over the ocean, and you certainly shouldn't have returned to the island in a fit of conscience.

"Then when I provoked your anger and nearly killed you, you tried to take my bending. And you failed at it all. The only thing that's worth feeling guilty over is your appalling performance. Don't make a career out of it; you would be a terrible antagonist. Take it from someone who was exceptional at filling that role." She lifted her nose and examined her fingernails haughtily then met his gaze more firmly. Aang stared at her, trying to figure out why she was excusing him. She made it sound like he hadn't done anything wrong.

She pinned him with her sudden stare. "You should note this. Give up on her; find someone else to love. I plan to spend the rest of my life convincing Katara she made the right choice when she chose me." She paused. "But in so doing, I could never stand in the way of you being her friend."

In a way, she was right. He had to give up on his idea for perfection for Katara, which until a few hours prior, had consisted of Katara not being with Azula. Oddly, Azula made him feel a lot better about the day. New hopes of finding a new friend snuck in, though he wouldn't push his luck that day. But Azula had vowed to make Katara happy and had forgive him on the same breath. "Thank you, Azula."

"You're not welcome," she sneered. Azula stood, looking so odd in her bulky parka pants and fitted wool shirt. Aang realized she was going to leave and pointed out, "It probably hasn't been fifteen minutes yet."

Azula glanced at the trunk in the corner before glancing back at him consideringly. "Do you play cards?"

* * *

**A new perspective**

The first place Aang went after he left the South Pole was Kyoshi Island. Sokka took one look at Aang and dropped a bottle of liquor on the table between them. Aang didn't usually drink, but this situation called for it as he haltingly told Sokka what had happened.

Maybe Sokka had the benefit of knowing Azula was fine from the start of the retelling, but he was pretty blasé about the whole thing. He laughed when Aang told him he thought Azula had been eaten. "You know what would have happened?"

It sounded like the start of a joke. Aang took the bottle from Sokka—clearly he'd had too much—who snatched it back. Sokka wagged his eyebrows with a grin until Aang prompted, "What?"

"She would have given it heartburn! Get it?"

It felt good to laugh, even if it was about that.

After Aang finished his entire story, Sokka asked him, "First: how are you not dead? Second: where is the second asshole Katara ripped you?"

And when most of the alcohol was gone, Sokka had slurred, "You know who's going to be in trouble for this? Me. Because I should have been the one to tell you what Katara wanted. I mean, I assumed you'd do your usual grand adventure, fast-friends act. But nope. At least you decided to try to kill—"

"I wasn't trying to kill her!" Aang protested. He was slurring too by now. The ground tilted in a funny way.

"—the one person in the world who can't actually can't be killed."

"You said 'can't' twice." It was funny enough to laugh at.

"It bears repeating," Sokka mumbled and then burst into laughter too.

They both had horrible hangovers in the morning, but that was okay. Aang felt like he could breathe again even with his head pounding and his stomach twisted up.

When Aang dropped by Gaoling to check on Toph—and make sure she hadn't killed her parents while she was there—he confessed to what had happened. He'd been afraid of her reaction because she seemed to honestly like Azula. Instead of lambasting Aang, Toph punched him in the shoulder and said, "She's one of three people who can actually write to me! You aren't allowed to kill those people."

"I wasn't trying to kill her," he said with a sigh.

Toph wrapped an arm around his shoulder for a painful hug. His spine popped, and he winced. She said, "Yeah, yeah, I figured. This is gonna be an awesome story someday."

Maybe someday. Not yet though. Sokka and Toph seemed to take this as just a new thing to rib him about. Toph laughed so hard she cried when Aang told her he dug a grave for Azula. Being the butt of a joke was a lot better than what he'd been afraid of.

When Aang made his trip to the Fire Nation for Azula's coronation, he felt a lot better about everything. He and Zuko had exchanged a few letters the last few weeks, and Zuko seemed more surprised than upset. When they met in person, Zuko shrugged off Aang's concerns. "Maybe it worked out the way it had to. If you'd been with her, how could you have helped? Azula has to do stuff for herself. I'm not so sure she can actually be killed, honestly. If anyone's to blame, she is."

Now Aang took a breath and squared his shoulders as he waited for the woman he'd come to see. It would serve him right if she refused to see him, but only a minute after he asked one of her servants to see her did she walk out into the hallway from her apartment.

Azula was a surprise yet again. She was still wearing her betrothal necklace. On top of that, she wore a casual robe and pants and was barefoot. Aang wasn't sure he'd ever seen her barefoot. The weirdest thing was she had lipstick smeared all over her mouth.

"Did you miss?" he ventured to ask as they walked down the palace hallway.

She raised a dark eyebrow in question. That expression was so much like Katara that Aang was startled.

"Your lipstick."

Azula raised a hand to her face and twisted her lips in irritation as she wiped her mouth with her palm. "Ana has an unfortunate fixation with my makeup."

Aang couldn't quite believe that Azula had let a little girl smear lipstick all over her, but it wasn't as weird a thought as it would have been just a month ago. Especially not now, knowing that she'd asked Sokka to help her and Katara have kids. Especially knowing that Azula had chosen to share the throne—Azula and Zuko _sharing_?—if only to be able to go to the South Pole with Katara every year.

How had he been so blind?

"Thanks for agreeing to talk with me."

Azula didn't respond.

"I have a few questions I was hoping you would answer."

"By all means," she said as they settled onto a table on a balcony. The lanterns that lit the balcony in the night flared blue momentarily. Was she showing off? A servant dropped off a teapot and two cups before Azula motioned the man away.

"How did you know how to redirect lightning?"

She shook her head vaguely. "I can lightningbend. It's inherent."

"Iroh said he had to study waterbending before he knew how," Aang pointed out.

Azula sipped her tea and cocked her head. "No wonder he thought he was doing me a favor when he offered to teach me." She regarded her cup. "This story doesn't go beyond you and me. You will not remark on Ozai in any way."

Aang nodded, uncertain about what he was about to hear.

"When I first tried to bend lightning, I held the energy in my chest but couldn't direct it. It went down, as it likes to do in those situations. My feet were burned and my heart palpitated irregularly for a few days. Ozai instructed me to lightningbend again before I left the training circle that day. I was too afraid the first few times I tried, and then I realized I wasn't going to be treated until I managed it."

She met his eyes. "So I calmed myself, bent lightning, and forced it where I wanted it to go."

That was awful. He hadn't even considered Ozai would do that to his favorite. Ozai's betrayal hadn't been that out of character then, which was just so sad. Aang opened his mouth and closed it when he remembered the terms.

"Ozai occasionally used lightning when we sparred. He never meant to hit me, but on one occasion, I was off balance from an earlier attack and wasn't able to dodge. I remembered as I took the energy into my chest the difference between letting it go through my feet and directing it elsewhere. So I directed it elsewhere."

"Just like that?" Aang asked quietly. He was a little in awe of her talent. He wondered if she would consider giving him a few firebending lessons.

"Just like that." Azula sipped her tea calmly, as if she hadn't just described one of the worst things Aang had ever heard. "What are your other questions?"

"What happened on the island? I'd like a little more detail."

"Zuko touched something when you went with him, didn't he?" After he nodded, she continued. "That something was an egg. He woke it up. It hatched and drove the other residents away. And then I encroached upon her territory…and as any feral dragon would, she wanted to kill me."

He felt an icy flush of panic at the thought. How had she survived? "How did you get your firebending back?"

"I took control of its fire and rediscovered my own."

A lot like her lightning redirection, wasn't it? Maybe Zuko was right about Azula being un-killable.

"How did you get back to the South Pole?"

"I swam," she said lightly. "And I happened to be picked up by a fisherman, one of the people who used to live on that island coincidentally."

Aang was both relieved that the Sun Warriors were okay and startled by the thought of Azula swimming in the ocean. The chances of her swimming near a boat in the middle of the northwest sea was next to nothing. This woman was insanely lucky. He wished Azula had just waited for him. "You met them?"

"Yes."

"Where were the other…um, Ran and Shaw? Did they say?"

She met his eyes when she responded. "Apparently in hiding, waiting for their aggressive offspring to leave their island. In any case, the people were willing to take me to an independent port nearby, and I caught a ride with a ship sent from the North Pole to the South Pole."

It still burned Aang up a little bit that Katara hadn't asked him for help. She'd written Sokka and Azula, but not him. He wouldn't have let his bitterness with Azula stand in the way of helping the Southern Water Tribe. Maybe if Katara had asked for his help all of this would have turned out a whole lot better…but what he'd done was his own fault, not Katara's. Azula played a role too, but she seemed to understand her part.

Aang sighed and shook his head. Maybe Zuko was right; maybe it had all worked out like it was supposed to. It didn't excuse his juvenile temper tantrum and especially not his attack in the South Pole, but he'd definitely learned his lesson. He had his limits, and he had to be careful about his temper just like everyone else. "I want to apologize again."

Azula rolled her eyes. "I already told you—"

"For the fact I never gave you a chance."

Azula's mouth twitched into a frown. She waved her hand airily. "No doubt the way you were informed about me didn't help your opinion of me."

He realized what she meant and blushed. So she knew about that awful exchange during his second stupid proposal to Katara. He felt a similar mortification and anger now that Azula had brought it up, but she'd just offered him an excuse. Aang admitted, "That was really embarrassing."

"I'm sure you were no more mortified than Katara." Azula spoke without a trace of scorn or sarcasm.

He hadn't expected that, and despite the irritation that Azula must know what Katara had said to him, Aang smiled. "Sokka asked me if Kyoshi started haunting my spiritual meditations." He had never answered Sokka's question, but now he offered, "Kyoshi just laughed at me."

"How awkward." Azula smirked as she said that.

She summed up being derided by his past life nicely.

"Tell me about it." Aang tapped his finger lightly on the table. "It wasn't about me wanting Katara, what I did. I gave up on her a long time ago. I assumed that you took her for granted. It made me really angry that she married you anyway. But I never meant to just leave you there."

"That's evident since you went back. And obviously I purposefully provoked your anger several times, including in the South Pole. Like with everything else, I'm quite good at that." She took a deep breath and released it. "I apolo—" She stopped, met his eyes, and said, "Aang, I'm sorry. For the anger I caused you and how that hurt Katara. I want you to keep your relationship with her. She needs you as a friend."

Aang felt his jaw drop. He nodded slowly, feeling odd respect for Azula for that frank apology. "I forgive you. Your part still doesn't excuse mine."

Azula cocked her head and studied him in the lamplight. "Regardless, I hope those fallacious beliefs have been banished."

"Fall…what?" It sounded a lot like 'phallic' so he was a little afraid to repeat the word.

She rolled her eyes. "Fallacious. Wrong, incorrect, faulty, false."

Why hadn't she just said wrong? Aang wasn't sure how to respond to that so he said, "I'd like to go to your coronation tomorrow to support you."

Azula's eyes met his for a long moment. Then she sighed as she leaned back in her chair. "I suppose that would be helpful, especially with the ambassadors. Ba Sing Se isn't pleased with my new title."

It wasn't like he'd expected her to say 'thank you'. Aang offered, "Bumi likes you though."

"I'm not sure the man is capable of disliking someone. We had an interesting conversation in Omashu."

Aang tried to imagine that conversation and flat out couldn't. Those two together were probably nuts. He wondered if they wrote each other. Azula stood up, and he hastened to follow. She glanced at him. "Come by to see Ana before you leave. She was upset you left so soon in the South Pole."

Okay, he couldn't be blamed after that statement. Aang blurted, "Can I hug you?"

Azula pinned him with a terrifying stare. "Try it and I'll castrate you."

"Come on. We always hug."

She curled her lip. "Who always hugs? Because you certainly don't mean me."

"Me and my friends." Aang offered a smile and opened his arms. He waggled his eyebrows.

Azula took a step backward and raised her hand in warning. "Don't you dare—"

Aang wrapped his arms around her. She was ramrod straight in his arms, and he actually heard her teeth grind. "See!" He grinned mischievously over her head. "Isn't this fun? I already feel better."

Azula actually looked a little rumpled when he let her go. She also looked like she was considering making good on her threat. Aang didn't give her the chance. He bounced off of the balcony with a wave. "See you tomorrow!"

"I liked you better when you hated me," he heard her say. Aang started whistling as he walked through the palace garden to check on Appa.

So he'd be ninety before Katara forgave him. So he'd turned into a pretty awful person for a little while and did some things that still shamed him. Right then Aang felt pretty good about himself anyway.


End file.
